Part 14

The reason why so few can realise the meaning of the term “self-knowledge,” is that the knowledge obtained in our schools is exclusively of an artificial kind. We read that which other men have believed and known and we imagine we know it. We fill our minds with the thoughts of others and find little time to think for ourselves. We seek to arrive at a conviction of the existence of this or that object by means of arguments and inferences, while we refuse to open our eyes and to see ourselves the very thing about whose existence we argue. Thus from a theosophical point of view we should appear to a higher being like a nation of people with closed eyes arguing about the existence of the sun and unable or unwilling to look at it for ourselves.

There is only one way to arrive at real self-knowledge, and this is Experience. By external experience we attain knowledge of external circumstances; by experiencing internal powers we attain internal knowledge of them. To know in reality means to be. By becoming material we learn the laws ruling in matter; by becoming spiritual we learn the laws of the spirit; our will is free to guide us in either direction. We cannot know truth in any other way than by becoming true, nor wisdom except by becoming wise. We can know any external or internal power, be it heat or light, love or justice, only by the effects which we experience from its action upon or within our own self.

Man’s life in his present condition resembles a dream, and the dreams of humanity as a whole, no less than those of the individual, repeat themselves over and over again. They come and go and come again, appearing perhaps in changed forms, like clouds floating upon the sky and assuming different shapes, but representing the old, ever-returning illusions. While above them, unseen and unknown, shines the sunlight of eternal, unchanging truth, whose presence may be felt like the warm rays of the sun penetrating the clouds, but which to be known requires to be seen. The temple of nature is open to everyone who is able to enter; its light is free to everyone who is able to see; everything is a manifestation of truth, but it requires the presence of truth in ourselves to enable us to perceive it. That which hinders us from entering the temple of nature, from seeing the light and perceiving the truth, are the shadows which we ourselves have created. The real object of the lights kindled by science is not to reveal the truth—which requires no artificial light to be seen, and whose own light is quite sufficient for that purpose—but to destroy the fogs which hinder us from seeing the truth. No one would think of examining the sun by the light of a candle; but the candle-light may guide us through the dark passages of the labyrinth of matter to the door which opens upon the surface, where after the daylight is seen, artificial help is no longer required. But as in seeking our way through a tunnel the best guide is the light that shines from afar through the entrance, so a perception of truth in the heart is the only reliable guiding star in the labyrinth of ever-changing illusions.

All the scientific lights in which this light of eternal truth is not reflected, however radiant they may be, are only so many will-o’-the-wisps misleading the wanderer. All scientific theories and hypotheses based upon a non-recognition of the inner constitution of man and denying his super-terrestrial origin are founded on a misconception of truth. Such opinions are continually subject to change, and no new theory of that kind exists at present which has not existed in some similar shape before. But the truth itself is independent of these opinions, it has always existed and there have always been some who were capable of recognising it, and others who, unwilling or unable to see it, based their knowledge upon misconceptions and superstitious beliefs founded upon other men’s assertions.

Modern medical science, with all its modern aids and paraphernalia, has only succeeded in working itself up to a more detailed knowledge of some less important phenomena in the kingdom of matter; while a great number of far more important things that were known to the ancients have been forgotten. As to the power of the soul over the body, tremendous as it is, almost nothing is known; because the souls of those who live entirely in the kingdom of speculations evolved by their brain, are asleep and unconscious. An unconscious soul can no more exert any power than an unconscious body; its motions can at best be instinctive, because deprived of the light of intelligence. It is far more important to the progress of real science that the soul of man should awaken to a recognition of its own higher nature, than that the treasures of a science dealing with the illusions of life should be enriched by any new theories in which there is no recognition of the one foundation of truth. All that any sound theory or any reliable book can possibly do, is to displace a false theory which prevents man from seeing correctly; but the truth itself can be exhibited or revealed by no man and no theory, it can be seen only by the eye of the true understanding, when it reveals itself in its own light.

It has been said that it is not within the reach of science to enter the realm of noumena which underlie all phenomena and are their cause of manifestation; but without a recognition of the noumenon from which all phenomena spring, a true science (from scio, to know) will be as impossible as a system of mathematics with an ignoring of the existence of the number one from which all other numbers take their origin and without which no number exists. The soul in us is fundamentally identical with the One from which all phenomena originate. The soul which is can know that which is, while that in us which merely appears to be belongs to and deals with the realm of appearances.

The acquisition of this higher science therefore requires less an exertion of the speculative faculties of the brain than an awakening of the soul; is advanced less by an evolution of thoughts of various kinds than by the development of the inner man who is doing the thinking and causing the evolution of thoughts, for if that which is able to know in man does not know its own self, all the thoughts and ideas inhabiting the sphere of man’s mind will have no legitimate owner, but exist there merely as the reflections of the thoughts of other men, gathered around an illusion called the personal self.

The more the mind analyses a thing and enters into its minor details the easier does it lose sight of the whole; the more man’s attention is divided into many parts, the more will he step out of his own unity and become complicated himself. Only a great and strong spirit can remain dwelling within its own self-consciousness, and, like the sun, which shines into many things without becoming absorbed by them, looks into the minor details of phenomena without losing sight of the truth which includes the whole. The most simple truths are usually the ones which are the most difficult to be grasped by the learned, because the perception of a simple truth requires a simple mind. In the kaleidoscope of ever-varying phenomena the underlying truth cannot be seen upon the surface. As the intellect becomes more and more immersed in matter, the eye of the spirit becomes closed; truths which in times of old were self-evident have now been forgotten, and even the meaning of the terms signifying spiritual powers has become lost in proportion as mankind has ceased to exercise these powers. Owing to the conceit of our age of selfishness, which seeks to drag spiritual truths down to the scientific conception of a narrow-sighted animal rationalism, instead of rising up to their level, the character of modern popular science is shown in the amount of cleverness with which illusory self-interests are protected; “faith,” the all-saving power of spiritual knowledge, is believed to be superstition; “benevolence” folly, “love” means selfish desires, “hope” is now greed, “life” the creation of a mechanical process, “soul” a term without meaning, “spirit” a nonentity, “matter” a thing of which nothing is known, etc.

All this has been written to no purpose, if we have not succeeded in making it clear that real progress in the knowledge of human nature is only possible by means of a higher development of the inner nature of the physician himself. No one can attain any real knowledge of man’s higher state unless he attains to it himself by purity of motive and nobility of character. Only by recognising his body as a vehicle for the development and manifestation of a superior intelligence will he be able to realise the meaning of the words of Carlyle, who tells us that man in his innermost nature is a divine being, and that whoever puts his hand upon a human form touches heaven.

Wisdom must be the Master, science the servant. Science is the handmaid of wisdom; wisdom the queen. Science is a product of man’s imagination; wisdom the spiritual recognition of truth. Material science is a product of the essentially selfish desire to know; wisdom recognises no separation of interests, it is the self-recognition of universal and eternal truth in man. Science, guided by wisdom, can enter into the deepest mysteries of universal being by entering into the Unity of the All; but if science attempts to employ wisdom for the gratification of curiosity or other selfish ends, it is in opposition to wisdom and becomes folly. Therefore a favourite motto of the ancient Rosicrucians (of which Theophrastus Paracelsus was one), but which is understood by only a few, said: “I know nothing, I desire nothing, I love nothing, I enjoy nothing in heaven or upon the earth but Jesus Christ and him crucified.” This did not mean that they resolved to remain ignorant, or to lose themselves in pious reveries and dreams of past events, for Paracelsus also said: “God does not desire us to be ignorant blockheads and stupid fools”—but it meant that they had given up the whole of the illusion of self with all its necessarily illusive knowledge, desires, attractions and joys, and entered into the consciousness of that divine intelligence which during this earth-life is as it were crucified in man, and by entering into the higher spiritual state they had become one with Him, who is Himself the Truth in themselves and the source of all knowledge in heaven and upon the earth.

Forever the truth shines in the eternal kingdom of Light but the world of mind wherein our terrestrial nature moves, has its astrological laws, comparable to those that rule in the visible world and are known to astronomy. As the earth recedes from the sun in winter time and approaches it in the summer, so the spiritual evolution of man has its periods of spiritual enlightenment and of mental darkness, and there are little periods within the large periods, as here are days and nights in the year. Man, whether considered as representing humanity as a whole, a nation a people, a family, or an individual, resembles a planet revolving around its own axis between the two poles of birth and decay. That which is uppermost turns down and that which is below rises again to the surface. Truths disappear and are forgotten only to reappear again embodied in new and perhaps improved forms. Civilizations, systems of philosophy, religion and science come and go and come again, the absurdities of fashion that have been the pride of our parents and were laughed at by us become again the objects of admiration for our children, and the forgotten wisdom of the past will be again the wisdom of future generations. Thus the wheel would ever revolve in a circle, there would be no progress and no object of life, if the presence of the eternal sun of Divine Wisdom acting upon the centre of the wheel did not attract it towards itself and thus in the course of ages gradually transform the circular motion into a spiral gyration. At every turn of the great wheel its axis moves imperceptibly a little nearer to the source of all Life, although every period of evolution begins again at the foot of the ladder. The ladder upon which we are climbing stands perhaps upon a little higher ground than the one upon which our ancestors climbed, or which we climbed ourselves during previous incarnations; but there are many steps upon it which our forefathers have ascended and which we shall have to reach. The science of medicine forms no exception to this general rule, and we may safely assert that the system of medicine of Theophrastus Paracelsus, in its recognition of fundamental laws of nature is of such a high character that it will be for the medical science of the coming centuries to grow up to its understanding, nor will this advance in science be possible without a corresponding development, and this development will be inaugurated by a correct conception of the constitution of man.

While modern medical science has become degraded almost into a mere trade, flourishing under the protection of its self-interests which it receives from Governments, the medicine of the ancients was a holy art, requiring no artificial protection, because, standing upon its own merit, it rested upon its own success. The adept-physicians of the past performed cures which whenever exceptionally performed at present are called miraculous, and their possibility is denied by the majority of the learned; because they are not in possession of the spiritual powers required for their accomplishment, and consequently cannot conceive of the existence of such powers. Where is the physician of the present day who knows the extent of the power of the spiritually-awakened will acting at a distance of thousands of miles, or the power which human thought can exercise over the imagination of nature? Where is the professor of science who can consciously transfer his soul to a distant place by the power of thought and act there as if he were bodily present? The proof that these things have been done and are done even now is established as much as any other fact resting upon observation and logic; nevertheless it is popularly considered “scientific” to deny such facts and to treat the theory which explains them with contempt. The finer forces of nature are so thoroughly unknown to gross material minds that to mention their existence raises a roar of merriment among those who, being ignorant of the extent of the powers hidden in the constitution of man, require a sledge-hammer to kill a fly and a cannon to shoot at a sparrow.

While the eyes of material science are directed downwards, seeking within the bowels of matter and finding only perishing treasures, the sentimental idealist revels in dreams without substance. Being habituated to objective contemplation, the idealist obtains nothing real; for keeping distant from the object of his research for the purpose of seeing it objectively, he prevents himself from becoming identified with that object, and he cannot have any self-knowledge of that which he is not himself. Neither can the materialist who denies the existence of Spirit in the universe have any real knowledge, for he ignores that which alone is real and deals only with the relations existing between phenomena which the unknown spirit produces. Real knowledge such as is the product not of mere knowing, but of becoming, ought to be the basis of all true science. This it is which constitutes that Theosophia or Self-recognition of Truth, which will be the guiding star of the physician in the future as it has been in the past.

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In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom

Containing the History of the True and the False Rosicrucians, with an Introduction into the Mysteries of the Hermetic Philosophy; and an Appendix on the Yoga Philosophy of the Rosicrucians and Alchemists.

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A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology

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The Secret Doctrine