Today’s skyscrapers may be taken as representing fundamentalism. On the one hand there are right-wing Christians whom we should bracket with the cruder forms of Islam. Both want to repress human individual free will and intelligence, to lure us into an unenlightening ecstasy. This is the influence of Lucifer.
On the other hand there is the militant scientific materialism that wants to snuff out the human spirit. Machines are making us machine-like. This is the influence of Satan, who wants to go further and squeeze out our spirit altogether and make us mere matter.
And just as Lucifer incarnated so too Satan will incarnate. He will do so as a writer. His aim will be to destroy spirituality by ‘explaining it away’. He will have the ability to create supernatural events, but then know how to give them a reductively scientific explanation.
At first he will appear to be a great benefactor on humankind, a genius. To begin with he himself may not realize he is the Anti-Christ, believing he acts only out of love for humanity. He will do away with much dangerous superstition and work to unite the religions of the world. However, there will come a moment of pride when he realizes he is achieving some things that Jesus Christ was, apparently, unable to achieve. He will then become aware of his identity and his mission.
How to recognize Satan? Or any false prophet? Or any false, purportedly spiritual teaching? False teaching usually has little or no moral dimension, the benefits of reawakening the chakras, for example, being recommended merely in terms of selfish ‘personal growth’. True spiritual teaching puts love of others and love of humanity at its heart — intelligent love, freely given.
Beware, too, of teaching that doesn’t invite questioning, or tolerate mockery. It is telling you, in effect, that God wants you to be stupid.
THIS BOOK HAS ACCUMULATED EVIDENCE to show that throughout history highly intelligent people have immersed themselves in esoteric philosophy.
They have used secret techniques to work themselves into altered states in which they can access an abnormally high level of intelligence.
The evidence shows that the groups involved in these societies were concerned to help forge new, more highly intelligent forms of consciousness.
Esoteric thinking has had a great, determining influence on human development that these days is almost wholly overlooked.
ACCORDING TO THIS WAY OF THINKING, humans once had unhindered access to the spirit worlds. Then this access became obscured and dimmed as matter hardened. Now the barrier between ourselves and the spirit worlds is becoming thinner again. The material world is fraying and becoming threadbare.
We may begin to become more aware of the patterns suggested by ‘coincidences’ and the synchronicities we experience. We may begin to see in these the outline of deeper laws.
We may become less quick to presume that our intuitions, our brilliant ideas are our own — and more open to the suggestion that they might be otherwordly promptings.
As well as becoming aware that we may be prompted by disembodied intelligence, we may realize, too, that we are connected with one another more directly through thinking than we are through speech and physical observation. We may develop a heightened sense that our interaction with other people is a far more mysterious process than we routinely suppose.
In the future we may also learn to look at relationships in terms of reincarnation. We may come to appreciate that relationships in previous incarnations may account for ‘subconscious’ feelings of liking and disliking which rise up when we meet strangers.
NATURALLY ALL THIS SEEMS MAD FROM a commonsensical point of view. There is no room anywhere in a scientific-materialist universe for these sorts of musings.
But the scientific-materialist view has its limitations, as I’ve tried to suggest.
When it comes to contemplating such far-flung events as the beginning of the universe, it is inevitable that huge amounts of speculation are mapped on to the smallest conceivable specks of evidence. Leading physicists’, cosmologists’ and philosophers’ speculations on infinite interlocking dimensions, parallel universes and ‘soap bubble universes’ involve just as much imagination as Aquinas’s speculations about angels on a pinhead.
The point is that when it comes to the biggest questions, people are again not necessarily choosing according to the balance of the probabilities, which may be almost too small to measure. The world is like the ‘perspected’ picture that can equally well be seen as a witch or a pretty young girl. People often choose one world-view in preference to another because somewhere in the depths of their being that is what they want to believe.
If we can learn to become conscious of this predisposition, we can make a decision which is — to that extent — free, because it is a decision based on knowledge. The part of us, somewhere in our depths, that wants to believe in a mechanical-materialist universe may on reflection not be the part of ourselves we want to determine our fate.
Know Thyself, commanded the Sun god. The techniques taught in ancient times in the Mystery schools and in modern times by groups like the Rosicrucians are intended to help us become aware of the rhythm of our breaths, our hearts, our sexual rhythms, the rhythm of waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep. If we can consciously attune our own individual rhythms to the rhythms of the cosmos measured by Jakim and Boaz, it is suggested we may eventually join our individual evolutions with the evolution of the cosmos. This would be to find meaning in life in meaning’s highest sense.
Esoteric philosophy calls for a rediscovery of the spiritual hierarchies ranged above us, and, intimately connected with that, a discovery of the divine capabilities ranged within us. This was the secret preserved and nurtured by geniuses as diverse as Plato, St Paul, Leonardo, Shakespeare and Newton:
1. If you can think so deeply that you can rediscover the spiritual roots of thought, if you can recognize thoughts as living, spiritual beings…
2. If you can develop a strong enough sense of your own individuality that you can become aware of your interaction with the Thought-Beings that weave in and out of yourself, yet not be overwhelmed by this reality…
3. If you can recreate the ancient sense of wonder and use this sense of wonder to help awaken the willpower that lies sleeping in your deep, dark recesses…
4. If the fire of love for your fellow human beings rises from your heart and causes you to weep tears of compassion…
… then you have been working on the Four Elements. You have begun the process of their transformation.
This is the mysterious fourfold ‘work’ also alluded to by St Paul in I Corinthians 13: ‘For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part but then shall I know even as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love…’
Intuition is transformed intellect that perceives the spiritual beings as real. Paul calls this faith.
Wonder is transformed feeling, feeling that has become aware of the spiritual workings of the cosmos but is not overwhelmed by them. Paul calls this hope.
Conscience is transformed will, when by the exercise of thought and imagination, faith and hope, we have begun to transform that part of ourselves, including the willpower that lives beneath the threshold of consciousness. Paul calls this charity or love.