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THE FAR YONDER SCRIBE AND OFT TIMES SHADOWED SUBSTANCES WATCHED IN SOME AMAZE THE ZED ALIZ ZED IN SWIFT REPEAT SCATTER STAR DUST AMONGST THE LETTERS OF THEIR PROGRESS
NUMBER 9 THE SEARCH FOR THE SIGMA CODE Cecil Balmond 1998 Cycles and Patterns Page 165 Patterns "The essence of mathematics is to look for patterns. Our minds seem to be organised to search for relationships and sequences. We look for hidden orders. These intuitions seem to be more important than the facts themselves, for there is always the thrill at finding something, a pattern, it is a discovery - what was unknown is now revealed. Imagine looking up at the stars and finding the zodiac! Searching out patterns is a pure delight. Suddenly the counters fall into place and a connection is found, not necessarily a geometric one, but a relationship between numbers, pictures of the mind, that were not obvious before. There is that excitement of finding order in something that was otherwise hidden. And there is the knowledge that a huge unseen world lurks behind the facades we see of the numbers themselves."
SOME MYSTICAL ADVENTURES G. R. S . Mead 1910 AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. "Heaven above, heaven below; stars above, stars below; all that is above thus also below." *-Kircher, Prodrom. copt. pp. 193 and 275 Page 1 ." 'As above, so below.' Is this great 'word' a sacramental phrase, a saying of wisdom, an aphorism, a mystic formula, a fundamental law; or a two-edged sword of word-fence that will probably do the wielder serious damage, if he is not first put through careful training in its handling-which ? Whether this famous saying is of Hermetic origin or no, we will not stay formally to inquire. In essence it is probably as old as human thought itself; and, as probably, the idea lying underneath it has been turned topsy-turvy more frequently than any other of the immortal company. (*Copt. Text omitted) Page 2 'As above, so below' doubtless enshrines some vast notion of analogical law, some basis of true reason, which would sum up the manifold appearances of things into one single verity. But. the understanding of the nature of this mystery of manifoldness from the one-all one and one in all-is not to be attained by careless thinking, or by some lucky guess, or by the pastime of artificial correspondencing. Indeed-if the truth must out-in ninety-nine cases of a hundred, when one uses 'as above, so below' to clinch an argument, we find that we have begged the question from the start, ended where we began, and asserted the opposite of our logos. Instead of illumining, not only the subject we have in hand, but all subjects, by a grasp of the eternal verity concealed within our saying, we have reversed it into the ephemeral and false proposition: 'As below, so above.' Deus, inversus, est Demon; and there's the devil to pay. Yes, even along our most modern lines of thought, even in propositions and principles that are every day coming more and more into / Page 3 / favour in the domain of practical philosophising, we find our ageless aphorism stood upon its head with scantiest ceremony. In the newest theology, in the latest philosophy, we find a strong tendency to revive the ancient idea that man is the measure of the universewhether we call this opinion pragmatism or by any other name that sounds more sweetly. ' As below,' then, 'so above.' In fact we do not seem to be able to get away from this inversion. We like it thus turned upside down. And I am not altogether sure that it is not an excellent exercise thus to anthropomorphise the universe, if only to fling the shadow of our best within on to the infinite screen of the appearance of things without. For is not man kin really with all these-worlds, systems, elements, and spaces and infinitudes, times and eternities? But this way of looking at the thing does not as a rule' intrigue' the beginner in mystic speculation; it is all more naive. Fascinated with some little known fact of the below, marvelling at some striking incident that has come under his notice-striking, fascinating for him, of course-he usually puts a weight upon it that it cannot bear, exaggerates a particular into a universal, and, with a desperate plunge of joy, imagines that he has finally arrived at truth / Page 4 / -taking his topsy-turvy' as below' for the eternal' as above.' He has not the faintest notion that, had he truly reached to that 'above,' he would know not only the solitary 'below' that has come dazzlingly into his cosmos, but every other' below' of the same class. But again from this height of ' philosophising,' let us come down to mystic commonplace. Of things physical we have certain definite knowledge, summed up in the accurate measurements and observations, and by the general mechanical art, of modern science. Beyond this domain there is for mechanical science x simply; for the 'seeing' mystic, however, there is not a simple x, but an indefinite series of phases of subtler and subtler sensations. Now, as every intelligent reader knows, it is just the nature of these extra-normal impressions that is beginning to be critically investigated, on the lines of the impersonal method so justly belauded by all scientific workers. In this domain, of such intense interest to all beginners, how shall we say our 'as above' applies? And here let us start at the beginning; that is to say, the first discrete degree beyond the physical-the psychic or so-called , astral.' What constitutes this a discrete degree? Is it / Page 5 / in reality a discrete degree? And by discrete I mean, is it discontinuous with the physical; that is to say, is there some fundamental difference of kind between the two ?-' East is east, and West is west'; Psychic is psychic, and Physical is physical. But how? Sensationally only, or is it also logically to be distinguished; is there a fundamental law of difference between them? The first difficulty that confronts us is this: That, however keen a man's subtler senses may be, no matter how keenly' clear-seeing' he may have become, he seems unable to convey his own immediate experience cleanly to a second person, unless, perhaps, that second person can' see' with the first. Try how he may, he is apparently compelled to fall back on physical terms in which to explain. Indeed, it is highly probable that all that has been written on the' psychic,' has produced no other impression on non-psychic readers than that it is a subtler phase of the physical. And this, presumably, because the very seer himself in explaining the impressions he registers, to himself, that is, to his physical consciousness, has to translate them into the only forms that consciousness can supply, namely physical forms. Page 6 Indeed, there seems to be a gulf fixed between psychic and physical, so that those direct impressions which would pass thence to us, cannot. In other words, they cannot, in the very nature of things, come naked into this world; they must be clothed. Now if this is true, if this is an unavoidable fact in the constitution of things, then the very nature of the psychic is removed from the nature of the physical by an unbridgeable gulf. 'East is east, and West is west.' But is it really true ? Is it only that, so far, no one is known who can bridge the gulf perfectly? Or supposing even that there be those who can so bridge it; is it that they are unable to make their knowledge known to others, simply because these others cannot bridge the gulf in their own personal consciousness, and therefore cannot follow the continuum of their more developed brethren? Page 7 How, again, we ask, does psychic fundamentally differ from physical? Can we in this derive any satisfaction from speculations concerning the so-called' fourth dimension' of matter? This is a subject of immense difficulty, and I do not here propose to enter into anything but its outermost court. All that I desire to note, for the present, is that all analogies between an imagined' flatland' and our three-dimensional space, and between the latter and the supposed fourth-dimensional state, are based upon the most flagrant petitio principii:. It is a case of , As below, so above,' with a vengeance! 'Flatland '-space of two dimensions, plus the further gratuitous assumption of two-dimensional beings who have their living and their moving therein-is inconceivable as matter of any kind. A superficies is-an idea; it is not a thing of the sensible world. We conceive a superficies in our minds; it is a mental concept, it is not a sensible reality. We can't see it, or taste it, or hear it, or smell it, or touch it. Our two-dimensional beings are at best figments of the imagination. They are absolutely inconceivable in terms of space as entities; they can't move, they can't be sensible of one another. For in the abstract concept called a surface, there can be no position from the standpoint of itself / Page 8 / and things like it, but only from the standpoint of a consciousness outside it. Even the most primitive sense of touch would be non-existent for our' flatlanders,' for there would be nothing to touch. And so on, and so forth. Therefore, to imagine how three-dimensional things would appear to the consciousness of a 'flatlander,' and from this, by analogy, to try to construct four-dimensional things from a series of three-dimensional phenomena, is, apparently, a very vicious circle indeed. We can't get at it that way. We have to seek another way, a very different' other way,' apparently, by means of which we may get out of three dimensions into-what? Into-two, either way or every way? Who knows? Any way, the later Platonic School, curiously enough, called the' psychic' the' plane' -that is, the two-dimensional and not the fourdimensional, according to one of the so-called Chaldaean Oracles: "Do not soil the spirit nor turn the plane into the solid." The' spirit' corresponds to what we have been calling the , psychic' in its lower phase, and the' plane' to the' psychic' in its higher. Higher than this were the' lines' and' points,' which pertained to the region of mind-formal and formless. What, then, again we ask, is the psychic proper as compared with the physical? How do things appear on the psychic proper? For so far, in the very nature of things, whenever we talk' down here' of the psychic we have to talk of it in terms of the physical. In what, then, to use a famous term of ancient philosophising, consists its' otherness' ? Is' otherness' in this to be thought of as distinguished simply by a gulf in matter, a gap ?-this seems to be absurd; for" nature does not leap," she also" abhors a vacuum. Here then we are confronted with the other side of the shield, with the unavoidable intuition that there is a continuum in matter from grossest to subtlest; and we may speculate that if a human entity were to progress through this series of grades of matter in space, he would have successively to leave his various' vehicles,' molecular, atomic, inter-atomic, etc.-in states of ever greater tenuity-while, as in the case of John Brown, his soul would" go marching on," until it arrived at the last limit-whenever or / Page 10 / wherever that may be, in a universe that ever at every point enters into itself! All things, then, would appear to be solidified down here by the" sky's being rolled up carpetwise," to paraphrase the Upanishad. For the , sky' is here the' ether' -the one substance, the simplicity of things. The' above' is thus , involved' into the' below'; and if we could only follow the process, perchance we should then be able really to understand something of the truth underlying our aphorism. As a matter of fact, this continuum of matter is the ground on which all scientific thinking is based; perpetual and continuous transformation but no sudden leaps-orderly evolution, no miraculous or uncaused spontaneous surpnses. This seems immediately to follow from the major premise of a continuum of this nature; and many people believe it is so, and base themselves upon it as on a sure foundation of fact. But, somehow or other, I am by no means satisfied that this will be the case. Is our salvation to be dependent upon machines; are we to become dei ex machinis ? But what has all this to do with' As above, so below'? Why, this: If tbe sensible world rises by stages (and descends by stages, too, for that matter) from this gross state familiar to us by our normal senses, through ever finer and finer grades of matter, we finally reach-ay, there's the rub; what do we reach? Where do we start? The truth of the matter is-be it whispered lowly-you can't think it out in terms of matter. But take the' ever so thin' idea for the moment, as sufficiently indefinite for any mystic who is not a metaphysician, using the latter term in / Page 12 / the old, old way, where physis included all nature, that is, natura, the field of becoming. As above, so below'-how many stages above ? Let us say seven, if it is so desired. The' above' as compared with the' below' wiJl then be very nebulous indeed, a sort of innermost' primitive ground' of some at present inconceivable mode and fashion. There may be 'correspondence,' but that correspondence must be traced through numerous orders of matter, where the very next succeeding order to the physical already acts as force, or energy, to the matter which falls beneath our normal senses. Here we are again, at the very outset, face to face with the' psychic' or 'astral' x-which, compared with the physical, should be regarded as a 'system of forces' rather than as a mould of the same fashion and form as the physical. And if this view is, at any rate, one stage nearer the reality than the interpretation of the psychic by purely physical imagery and symbolism-what can possibly be the nature of our No. 7, or No. 1, 'primitive ground' stage; when already at the first remove we exhaust all our possibilities of description? For we certainly do not get much' forrarder' by simply flinging the forms and pictures of the physical, as it were, on to a series of mirrors / Page 13 / which differ from one another only in their tenuity. At any rate, it appears so to the reflecting mind; though at the same time it seems quite as natural that the impressions of the subtler senses should be clothed in physical forms when reflected in physical consciousness. Let it be understood once for all, that I have not the slightest pretension in any way to decide between these apparent contradictions of sense and reason; indeed, I personally believe it to be unseemly and disastrous to attempt to separate the eternal spouses of this sacred marriage. In most intimate union must they ever be together, to give birth to the true Man-who is also their common source. Still it is of advantage continuously to keep before our minds the question: What is a prototype; what is a paradigm; what a logosa reason; what an idea? What, for instance, to use Platonic terms, is the autozoon, the animal itself, or that which gives life to itself, as compared with all animals; what the ever the , same,' as compared with all the' others' ? The intuition of things that underlay the philosophising of the Western world at its birth in conscious reasoning, from the time of Pythogoras onwards, gives us preliminary help, it is true, in thus setting the noumenal or ideal over against the sensible or phenomenal-the / Page 14 / mind over against the soul. But the characteristic of union is that it 'sees,' not another, but itself, and knows it ever' sees' itself. This is the' Plain of Truth,' where ever are the true paradigms, and ideas, and reasons of all things; and when we say' where' we do not mean place or space; for it is the everlasting causation of these, and is not conditioned by them, but self-conditions itself. It would take too long further to pursue this high theme in the present adventure. One thing alone I have desired to call attention to: the careless translation of living ideas into rigid notions, the danger of falling too readily into that higher materialism that Stallo calls the' reification' of concepts. For when you have' reified' your hypothesis - be it gravity, or atomicity, or vibration-and reduced it to a rigid notion, a definite objective something for you, you have still got only the shadow and not the substance; the appearance, the phenomenon, and not the underlying truth, the noumenon. But to conclude; that' sight' which reveals to man the' reasons' of things, is surely a more divine possession than that' sight' which sees the sensible forms of things only, no matter how exquisitely beautiful and grandiose such forms may be. And when I say' sees' the' reasons' of things, / Page 15 / do I mean the intellectual grasping of some single explanation, some formula, some abstraction ~ By no means; I mean by' reason' logos in its most vital sense. I mean that when we 'see' the' reasons' of things, we see our' selves' in all things; for our real selves are the true ground of our being, the that in us which constitutes us 'sons of God '-logoi, as He. is Logos, kin to Him. 'As above, so below.' What, , above' where there is no place, no dimension, and no time? But even so, is the' above' superior to the , below '? Ah, that is where the mind breaks down, unable to grasp it. Is Eternity greater than Time ~ Is the Same mightier than the Other? Are we not still in the region of the opposites; neither of which can exist without the other, and each of which is co-equal with the other? \Ve are still in the region of words-words simply in this case, not living reasons; though the same term does duty for both in Greeklogos; showing yet once again that in verity Demon est Deus inversus. As Thou art above, so art Thou below; as Thou art in Thyself, so art Thou in Man; as Thyself is in Thee, so is Thy Man in Thyselfnow and for ever.
WORDS SWORD SWORD WORDS WORDS SWEAR OR DIE
SOME MYSTICAL ADVENTURES G. R. S . Mead 1910 AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. "Heaven above, heaven below; stars above, stars below; all that is above thus also below." *-Kircher, Prodrom. copt. pp. 193 and 275 Page 75 "He is for ever crucified upon the cross of the eternal opposites; and the passion of passions for man is the mystery of the creative energy which ever seeks to realise itself in the union of complementary natures."
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Thomas Mann 1875 - 1955 Page 466 "Had not the normal, since time was, lived on the achievements of the abnormal? Men consciously and voluntarily descended into disease and madness, in search of knowledge which, acquired by fanaticism, would lead back to health; after the possession and use of it had ceased to be conditioned by that heroic and abnormal act of sacrifice. That was the true death on the cross, the true Atonement."
SOME MYSTICAL ADVENTURES G. R. S . Mead 1910 AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. "Heaven above, heaven below; stars above, stars below; all that is above thus also below." *-Kircher, Prodrom. copt. pp. 193 and 275 Page 17 II HERESY "After the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers."-PAUL, in Acts xxiv. 14. PAUL was a heretic, Jesus was a heretic, Socrates was a heretic, the Buddha was a heretic. Indeed we might continue the list with most of the greatest names in history, and certainly with the names of all the founders of religions, philosophies and sciences. It is an instructive spectacle to see how every effort to make men think, and to render them more self-conscious, has been resisted with outcry, contumely and bitterness. The resistance to the new impulse is invariably begotten of devotion to that which in its day was new; for the heresy of to-day frequently becomes the orthodoxy of to-morrow. It is the swing of the pendulum. The pioneers of the world have invariably been considered heretics, for they are ever those who seek to shake themselves free from the inertia of the established order of things; they / Page 18 / labour in the pains of a new birth, striving to free themselves from the womb of convention, to come forth regenerate into the sunlight of self-conscious realisation. The lover of wisdom is thus a natural heretic for the orthodox of the moment, and his views and beliefs must naturally be considered by the lovers of things-as-they-seem-to-be as disruptive of their most cherished convictions. But is the lover of wisdom simply a heretic, in the ordinary sense of the word, when judged by an experience that looks beyond the conventional standards of the moment, both as to heresy and orthodoxy? I think not. He is a heretic in a far more extended sense. So heretical, indeed, that he may in many things be more orthodox than the orthodox; he looks beyond conventional orthodoxy and heresy towards a reconciliation of contraries, in the state of understanding that can appreciate all views at their just value. This at any rate is the ideal of such a lover; though undoubtedly many who think they are such lovers, are still content to remain in the inertia of a new convention, after they have freed themselves from the inertia of the generally accepted conventions of their day. It is of course heretical in the Western world of to-day to believe in the doctrines of karma and reincarnation; equally so is it considered / Page 19 / heretical, by many new believers in these doctrines, to hold to the dogmas of vicarious atonement and the immediate creation of the soul at birth. And yet the doctrine of vicarious atonement cannot be altogether foreign to the root-idea that lies at the back of the Mahayana Buddhist faith, for example, which, while basing itself on the doctrines of karma and reincarnation, at the same time teaches the renunciation of Nirvana, and the remaining on earth to save humanity. There is induhitably a measure of vicariousness in this doctrine; otherwise, if men have entirely to save themselves, there would be no meaning in preaching such an ideal. Again, the doctrine of Southern Buddhism with regard to the unreality of the soul is practically the same, in some of its forms, as the belief in the creation of a new soul at birth. For if the true Path of Wisdom lies precisely in the midst of all contraries, and the traveller on this Way is he who delights in the sport of magical transformation, whereby" the right becomes the left, and the left the right, the above the below, and the below the above, and the male with the female neither male nor female," as one of the old wisdom-sayings has it, then surely he will find, even in the most contradictory doctrines, some common elements that can become, as it were, the solvent which shall eventually transmute the two into a living unity. For Wisdom is that which includes all contraries. To me it has been one of the greatest joys of such study, that the more I have learned of the nature of the Gnosis, or by whatever other name we may choose to call the Wisdom that transcends normal knowledge, the more I have realised that no doctrine that has ever held the minds and hearts of men, is without some measure of ensouling truth. I have found that many a doctrine which, at first, I rejected as manifestly absurd, was seemingly so only because I had not learned to look at it with the right focus; I had paid more / Page 21 / attention to what foolish people had said about it, than to what the wise had said, and had not let the doctrine speak for itself in the court of uncommon pleas. For example, the dogma of creation out of nothing used to distress me, until I came across a pleader in that court of universal justice-old Basilides, who spoke wisely about the creation of the things-that-are from the things-that-are-not, so that I could link up the idea with the Sat and Asat of the Upanishads, and find contentment in the thought. Of course I do not for one moment pretend that anyone else must be satisfied with what Basilides says. It was he, however, who showed me the way out, although the orthodox call him a desperate heretic and overwhelm him with abuse. And so perhaps he may help some others, who prefer even a one-eyed gnosis to a blind faith, and who believe it is not a sin to use their intellect (as far at any rate as it will go) for fear of becoming unpopular with those who, in the pride of not-knowing, shout Credo quia absurdum on all occasions. Many of my readers must be familiar with the tyranny of a Church whose stereotyped answer to every questioning of its authority is: This is the pride of the intellect, my son, the most subtle of all sins. The virtue of humility, the / Page 22 / greatest of the virtues, is what you lack. It is in vain you protest your humility, when it is just this pride of intellect which makes you refuse now, at this moment, to submit yourself to the Church's authority. What this type of mind can never see, is that there is a right and wrong use of pride, and a wrong and right use of humility. Pride and humility are one of another, and the pride of humility is as much pride as any other form of that passion. The humble use of pride in God's good gift of reason is more truly worship of Him than a debasing of oneself before the tyranny of self-interest, that arrogates to itself the dominion over the souls of men. It is this jealous spirit of monopoly in God's good things that has given birth to all the horrors of religious persecution. Men are not ashamed to pray to their God to deliver them from all infidels and heretics as anathema. And times without number they have taken care to make this prayer come true by fire and sword and rack. And the irony of it all is that those nearest to them in faith, are invariably regarded as the most damnable. It is, indeed, a remarkable thing that when differences arise among those who have previously been most closely united in religious faith and aspiration, then is the hostility most bitter and / Page 23 / relentless. We see it on all sides. What is the reason of this great bitterness? May it not be, in some measure, that those who have been so closely associated in religious thinge, who have so intensely and blindly believed that theirs was the only way, theirs the one means of salvation for all men, who are convinced that there should be one Church, and that their own, are enraged beyond measure at the shattering of their hopes by the dissent of their brethren, and believe that it is their late comrades who are solely responsible for the outrage they have suffered, instead of recognising that they have throughout been living in a fool's paradise, and that their late associates deserve their deepest thanks for bringing them to their senses? There can never be uniformity of belief so long as man remains as he is; and God forbid that humanity should ever become a mechanical will-less organism! The end of man is not that he should be made in one mould; the destiny of the nations is not that the ideal of a grim industrial age should be realised, and so an engine be evolved which shall turn out a host of like products of monotonous similarity. The end of man is knowledge of man preparatory to union with God. God is not only one but many, single and manifold; and the / Page 24 / knowledge of this manifoldness is as necessary to true Gnosis as is the knowledge of unity. Gnosis is the knowing of these two as the necessary complements each of the other; and the proper gnostic meditation is the holding of both in mind at once, in a balanced contemplation, which will afford the right conditions for the truth to come to birth, in a fruitful conception of practical wisdom, that can find expression in all moods and modes of thought and action. It is of course impossible to prevent the believers in one set of exclusive doctrines regarding the lover of this wisdom as a heretic; but it should be possible for such lovers to be on their guard against falling into this naIve duality, and selecting a set of dogmas as orthodox, when the sole heresy for' those in Gnosis' should be the ceasing from the effort to reconcile even the most appalling contradictions. For surely one of our most cherished hopes is that one day we may be initiated into the final truth, and learn how God and Devil are two sides of one Ineffable Mystery, which indeed even now, in our ignorance, we are forced to believe, in spite of our inability to raise the veil, and in spite of the danger we all recognise in preaching such a doctrine to those unprepared morally and spiritually. If I am not entirely mistaken, it is precisely / Page
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because the stereotyping of one particular form of faith is considered no longer to be desirable, that the spirit of the new age is endeavouring above all things to bring us face to face with contradiction on contradiction, to give us no pause and no peace, so that when we have thought at last we were safe in one position, established for ever in some great formula, we are suddenly shaken out of our inertia by the potent energy of some new idea that is forced upon our notice. 'What, then, can heresy and orthodoxy, in their ordinary connotations, mean to us, when it should be our joy to embrace them both and transcend them It will of course be objected by the many that a plain man wants a plain doctrine, and that this reconciliation of contraries is a juggler's business. Page 26 Well, we are not objecting to plain doctrines for plain folk; they are laid down with admirable precision in all the great religions, and we would no more think of doing away with them than of abolishing the police regulations. They are the bye-laws of the ethical code of the higher polity, and teach men to be good citizens of the world; but there is a still higher code of fundamental laws of wisdom, and one of them is precisely this reconciliation of the contraries. It is not a juggler's business, but Divine Magic, the Great Art of Wisdom, that transmutes evil into good, and transforms the impossible into the Great Potency wherewith the Divine perpetually energises. In the freer life of the Spirit we are for ever outbreathing some old heresy and inbreathing some new orthodoxy, and outbreathing some old orthodoxy and inbreathing some new heresy; it is the greater life of the Spirit, whereby we grow in wisdom. But if we would practise this true science of breath, the pranayama of Gnosis, we must hold our mental breath in balance, so that the great change of gnostic tendency may be effected, that from life we may pass to light, from the vitalisation of the mind to the illumination of the life. Page 27 Our minds are, at present, for the most part fixed; they are crystallised and formalised, and most rigidly so in the forms of our religious and scientific and philosophic beliefs. These masculine forms must be dissolved by the heat of the love of the feminine formless mind. Concentration must merge into contemplation, before the true re-formation, the' enformation according to Gnosis,' can be effected, and the crystals of the formal intellect be transmuted into the living essences of pure intelligence. How often has one paused amazed at the terror and hate of heresy displayed by the orthodox, and puzzled over the question: Why are they so terrified; why do they hate so bitterly? All the more so when it is found that the object of their detestation, not infrequently, proves on acquaintance excellent food for thought. This seems to differ little fundamentally from the commercial instinct that finds expression in Trusts. They fear for their monopoly, their trade-prospects, their combine. For naturally one would be foolish to fear for the Truth-that, at any rate, may be trusted to look after itself. But, it may be said that they fear for the souls of their fellows, lest they be led into error and so perish everlastingly. But have they not in this simply created a Moloch of their own / Page 28 / imagination, and would make all but their fellowslaves pass through the fire lighted by their inhumanity, in sacrifice to the black shadow of themselves which they worship as God? For the true lover of Wisdom there is no fear, but only joy in the unshakable belief that every questioning of opinion can end eventually only in the clearer shining forth of the Sun of Truth. His orthodoxy is to rejoice in heresy, and his heresy is to substitute any of the orthodoxies of the world for the Living Truth."
SOME MYSTICAL ADVENTURES G. R. S . Mead 1910 Page 29 III THE ELASTICITY OF A PERMANENT BODY PERHAPS it may be thought that I propose, in this adventure, to treat of some recondite problem of physics; but that is not my intention. I propose briefly to consider the nature of the permanent element in a religious and international body. Many confuse the idea of body with notions of shape and form, but I would venture to suggest that form is of the mind while body is of substance. There is a doctrine that man is possessed of a 'permanent body,' the substantial ground, as it were, from which proceed and to which return the births and deaths of his impermanent appearances, the perennial root of his evolutionary becomings, and the storehouse of his diversified experiences. It is not asserted that this' body' is unconditionally everlasting, but rather that it is permanent in the sense of lasting as long as But this is apotheosis, the transcending of the man-state of separate existence, and the entering into the Communion of Those-that-are; that is to say, the energising in the Everlasting Body of all things. The' permanent body,' then, is not the Everlasting Body, but the age-long substantial limit of the separated man-consciousness. How long this reon of substantial limit lasts, depends on the nature of the man's activities; nevertheless this , body' must in any case be considered as permanent, when contrasted with the length of days of the bodies of incarnation which a man uses in his many lives on earth, or in the' three worlds.' When, however, we come to consider the meaning of 'body' in this connection, we should / Page 31 / be careful to keep our ideas concerning it as fluid as possible. We are here on the very borderland of individuality, and it depends entirely on the nature of the activities of the man whether, or no, the substance of this' body' shall be so condensed and crassified as to form , sheaths' to veil and dim the consciousness of the Self, or so wisely enformed and woven into such fine textures that it can supply' vestures ' of glory and radiance for the manifestation of the greater mysteries. The nature of this' body' changes completely, according as the desire of the man is set to 'go forth,' or the will of the man is fixed to 'return.' \Ve therefore find it described in the ancient books under quite contradictory epithets, such as ignorance and bliss; for it is on the borderland between the particular and the general, the individual and the cosmic. It is indeed one of the most difficult concepts for us to understand; for if we understood it really, we should have solved the riddle of what is called in Indian philosophy maya (illusion), and avidya (nescience ), and karana, that is to say' causal,' in the sense of its being the cause of our continuing to proceed forth into duality, and therefore the root of ignorance and the source of illusion. Nevertheless at the same time it is also the vehicle of our return to reality, / Page 32 / and our means of contact with unity; as such it is the complement of knowledge, and the spouse of the Divine energising. It is, therefore, evident that if we call it 'body,' we shall be doing less violence to the meaning of its actual nature, by qualifying it with the contradictory epithet' spiritual,' than by leaving it unqualified, to the danger of its being confused with notions of physical bodies. I should prefer to call it substance rather than matter, vehicle rather than body. The legitimate lord of this living nature is Atman or Spirit, the Self; this pure substance is corrupted by the misdeeds of men. When, therefore, we come to consider a body of individuals, we must be very careful not to beg the question, by assumming that we are dealing with a problem of a like nature to that of an individual human being. We are here face to face with the idea of a group, and should rather seek analogies in whatever notions we / Page 33 / may have, as to the nature of that far more difficult concept which is sometimes called the ' group-soul,' or ' group-spirit.' This idea connotes something that is other than the individual. The term is generally applied to animals, and not infrequently, without more ado, we conclude that the human individual is vastly superior, and in our conceit thank God that we have got beyond that stage. But this is a short-sighted view, based upon the comparison of a single man with a single animaL The group-soul idea, I would venture to think, is connected with far wider conceptions. In the first place, it is connected with the tradition of the' sacred animals,' which all but a few in the West have relegated to the limbo of exploded superstitions. The' sacred animals' are said to be 'lords of types,' of whom the mass of animals of that type are, as it were, the corpuscles of their body. These' corpuscles' are ever coming and going, ever being born and dying; but so long as that' type' is manifested, there is a permanent vehicle for it even on the physical plane. These' lords of types,' it is said, are great intelligences of the Master-mind; they are the truly' sacred animals,' types of intelligence as well as orderers of modes of life. Now what obtains among the animals, we may well believe, is not in principle confined to / Page 34 / them alone; it is rather a showing forth, in modes and forms that man can distinguish plainly in the external world, of the mysteries of his own greater nature. As there are forms and modes without, so tbere are forms and modes within; and within our own kingdom there is, I would venture to suggest, a precise analogy with the animal groupsoul and the lords of its types. Families, clans, and peoples, are all, according to types, conditioned by super-human intelligences, and representative of the' permanent bodies' of such greater beings. Here the bond is blood; and blood is, I venture to think, more potent than mind, using the term mind here as indicative of mind in individual man. When, however, we come to consider a religious body, we are confronted with a still more difficult problem; and, therefore, whatever suggestions one ventures to put forward, must be advanced with all reserve. I can well believe that the real work of such a body may be the evolution of a conscious instrument, or permanent ground, for the incarnation or manifestation of a Great Soul; that is to say, that while at the same time it affords the conditions for its individual members to perfect themselves, it should also have a common object that no individual in it can achieve by him / Page 35 / self, and that this object should be the endeavour to realise consciously a corporate common life, by means of which the power, wisdom and love of a Great Soul may manifest itself to the world. Page 35 This, I believe, is also a question of' blood,' for 'the blood is the life.' But this blood will be the Blood of those who are' of the Race of Him.' There is much talk of a 'new race,' and some people are looking for a new type of race on the lines of the old separated nations and peoples but I would fain believe that the' new race' will, as it has ever been prophesied concerning it, be of every nation under heaven, as far as its physical bodies are concerned. This has been attempted before; nations and communities of religionists have boasted themselves to be the people, are doing so to-day. This exclusiveness should be avoided, if we would live according to reality and grow in wisdom. Performance, and not the making of claims, should be our business, if we would attain to gnosis. The Spirit that we desire to see incarnate is, I believe, not the spirit of the individual, but a Spirit that subordinates individuality to the good of the whole. Many are endeavouring after this ideal in manifold instinctive ways.
Some, again, have / Page36 /
the ambition consciously to set about this great work, and knowingly to be about this holy business; they long to come into conscious contact with a Great Soul of the order of Him who uses the whole body of humanity as His Body, and knows that all types of bodies and souls and minds are necessary for the purpose of the expression of His Life. Page 37 Temperature, in the case of living beings, applies especially to the blood; and temperature, when thought of in connection with the deeper meaning we have ventured to give to the idea of blood, in an organism bound together for a spiritual purpose, is rather temperament.
SOME MYSTICAL ADVENTURES G. R. S . Mead 1910 XVI. MYSTIC REALITY Page 221 "
IN the modern Western world in general, and perhaps nowhere more so than in England, there exists an innate prejudice against all that savours of the mystic life. Not only among the people, but also among those who set the thought - fashion of the day, the mystic is viewed with suspicion when not treated with contempt. MYSTIC REALITY. Page 224 224 MYSTIC REALITY 226 228 MYSTIC REALITY. MYSTIC REALITY. 234 MYSTIC REALITY. 236
SOME MYSTICAL ADVENTURES G. R. S . Mead 1910 ON THE WAY OF THE PATH. Page 216 "More wise is the advice which is given in that / Page 217 / excellent little treatise known as Light on the Path, when it says: " Seek out the way. This is balanced advice, the way of the life of the spirit, which lives in the union of the inbreath and out-breath; indeed in the mode of the spirit the in-breath and out-breath are not consecutive but simultaneous. This admirable little book tells of the nature of the way with true insight; and there must be few who cannot see that such instruction completely rebuts the charge of unpracticality that has so often been brought against the mystic way; for it shows that its pursuit is the most immediate, intense, wakeful, agile, living thing in the world. Spontaneous intensification of awareness, instantaneous operation, immediate comprehension, perpetual agility and adaptability,-these spiritual powers and many another of like nature can hardly be called unpractical; they are rather magical, and miraculous. It is therefore well said in The Voice of the
Silence: "Then in this way know (or think) God; as having all things in Himself as thoughts, the whole Cosmos itself. Page 219 "Become more lofty than all height, and lower than all depth. Collect into thyself all senses of all creatures,-of fire, and water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place,-in earth, in sea, in sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, and dead, in after-death conditions.
SOME MYSTICAL ADVENTURES G. R. S . Mead 1910 MYSTIC REALITY. Page 230 "To be free of form connotes the possibility of taking any form at will; to be free of change means that one is ever changing. True life is this power of freedom; to be stuck in one form of body, or feeling, or thought, to be incapable of change, is true death. That which is ever changing is that which is instantaneous in life, and therefore essentially superior to change; that which can take all forms is ever present in every moment of time, and alone is immortal. Page 218
LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S THE 5S THE 5S LETTERS TRANSPOSED INTO NUMBER REARRANGED IN NUMERICAL ORDER LOOK AT THE 5FIVE5S LOOK AT THE 5FIVE5S LOOK AT THE 5FIVE5S THE 5FIVE5S THE 5FIVE5S 5 x 6 = 30
E typically takes first place regardless of which analysis method is used. What's The Most Common Letter Used In English? Thesaurus.com
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