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to the server to view the underlying object.
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"content": "\"According to the secret tradition, it was during the later Atlantean epoch that black magic and sorcery dominated the esoteric schools, resulting in the bloody sacrificial rites and gruesome idolatry which ultimately overthrew the Atlantean empire and even penetrated the Aryan religious world.\"<br /><br />- Manly P. Hall<br />The Secret Teachings of all Ages",
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"content": "\"According to the secret tradition, it was during the later Atlantean epoch that black magic and sorcery dominated the esoteric schools, resulting in the bloody sacrificial rites and gruesome idolatry which ultimately overthrew the Atlantean empire and even penetrated the Aryan religious world.\"\n\n- Manly P. Hall\nThe Secret Teachings of all Ages",
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"content": "All the tensions and contradictions in life are, and ought to be, reflected in one’s philosophy, and one should not attempt to compose them for the sake of neat philosophical construction. Philosophy cannot ever be divorced from the totality of man’s spiritual experience, from his struggles, his insights, his ecstasies, his religious faith and mystical vision.<br />Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power - at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.<br />Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has actually become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its nonmystical methods; above all... of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.<br />Louis Kronenberger<br />Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wise, more liberated and luminous state of being. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit to it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy.<br />Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins<br />Any simple act is very, very great if you do it with love and oneness... The greatest art of life is to feel happy by making someone else happy and thereby realize the mystical thread of life. Be fearless, be disciplined, be meditative, and be self-less. That will make you happy and playful.<br />Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar<br />The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested, compounded equally of joy and consciousness, free from admixture of any other perception, the very twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is supersensous wonder... It is enjoyed by those who are competent thereto, in identity, just as the form of God is itself the joy with which it is recognized.<br />Visvanatha Chakravarti, fully Visvanatha Chakravarti Thakura<br />Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with good, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.<br />I have sometimes a queer mystical feeling as regards the attitude of people in general. Just as there are physical diseases, so there are diseases of feelings. In a little town like this I feel that on some days everyone goes about hating everyone else. Then something happens and a good feeling comes back. I think the whole of mankind must be like that.<br />Sherwood Anderson<br />Learning is the heart of life - the mystical power that turns a word into a sign, a look into a smile, a house into a home, and a people into a civilization.<br />Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin<br />It is not just as we take it, this mystical world of ours: life's field will yield as we make it.<br />Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<br />That which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal.<br />William James<br />It is an eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that “where one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.”<br />Metaphysically, the world has three levels: physical, spiritual and mystical. We find life’s meaning at each level. What gives life meaning is sharing - sharing bread, babies, moments, death, celebrations. It is recognizing that there is no separation between human beings or between human beings and the evolution of the world. Subconsciously and consciously, we are constantly expressing the fact that we are divine.<br />Naima Jody Sherwood<br />In the end we shall have to say that there is no solution of an intellectual kind and that it is part of the general mystical paradox that the mystical revelation transcends the intellect.<br />W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace<br />The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.<br />Each mystic brings back confirmation of his own creed… The mystic brings his theological beliefs to the mystical experience; he does not derive them from it.<br />George Alonzo Coe<br />Mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.<br />William James<br />This incommunicableness of the transport is the keynote of all mysticism. Mystical truth exists for the individual who has the transport, but for no one else.<br />William James<br />We pass into mystical states from out of ordinary consciousness as from a less into a more, as from a smallness into a vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them as reconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in us. In them the unlimited absorbs the limits and peacefully closes the account.<br />William James<br />All authentic religion originates with mystical experience.<br />William Johnston",
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"content": "All the tensions and contradictions in life are, and ought to be, reflected in one’s philosophy, and one should not attempt to compose them for the sake of neat philosophical construction. Philosophy cannot ever be divorced from the totality of man’s spiritual experience, from his struggles, his insights, his ecstasies, his religious faith and mystical vision.\nPremature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power - at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.\nNominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has actually become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its nonmystical methods; above all... of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.\nLouis Kronenberger\nOur purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wise, more liberated and luminous state of being. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit to it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy.\nTom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins\nAny simple act is very, very great if you do it with love and oneness... The greatest art of life is to feel happy by making someone else happy and thereby realize the mystical thread of life. Be fearless, be disciplined, be meditative, and be self-less. That will make you happy and playful.\nShantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar\nThe experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested, compounded equally of joy and consciousness, free from admixture of any other perception, the very twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is supersensous wonder... It is enjoyed by those who are competent thereto, in identity, just as the form of God is itself the joy with which it is recognized.\nVisvanatha Chakravarti, fully Visvanatha Chakravarti Thakura\nReligion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with good, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.\nI have sometimes a queer mystical feeling as regards the attitude of people in general. Just as there are physical diseases, so there are diseases of feelings. In a little town like this I feel that on some days everyone goes about hating everyone else. Then something happens and a good feeling comes back. I think the whole of mankind must be like that.\nSherwood Anderson\nLearning is the heart of life - the mystical power that turns a word into a sign, a look into a smile, a house into a home, and a people into a civilization.\nEugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin\nIt is not just as we take it, this mystical world of ours: life's field will yield as we make it.\nJohann Wolfgang von Goethe\nThat which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal.\nWilliam James\nIt is an eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that “where one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.”\nMetaphysically, the world has three levels: physical, spiritual and mystical. We find life’s meaning at each level. What gives life meaning is sharing - sharing bread, babies, moments, death, celebrations. It is recognizing that there is no separation between human beings or between human beings and the evolution of the world. Subconsciously and consciously, we are constantly expressing the fact that we are divine.\nNaima Jody Sherwood\nIn the end we shall have to say that there is no solution of an intellectual kind and that it is part of the general mystical paradox that the mystical revelation transcends the intellect.\nW. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace\nThe mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.\nEach mystic brings back confirmation of his own creed… The mystic brings his theological beliefs to the mystical experience; he does not derive them from it.\nGeorge Alonzo Coe\nMystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.\nWilliam James\nThis incommunicableness of the transport is the keynote of all mysticism. Mystical truth exists for the individual who has the transport, but for no one else.\nWilliam James\nWe pass into mystical states from out of ordinary consciousness as from a less into a more, as from a smallness into a vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them as reconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in us. In them the unlimited absorbs the limits and peacefully closes the account.\nWilliam James\nAll authentic religion originates with mystical experience.\nWilliam Johnston",
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"content": "The Ancient One [as Doctor Strange is being moved through various dimensions of the Multiverse] You think you know how the world works? You think that this material universe is all there is? What is real? What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses? At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts shape reality. This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life giving. Others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie ravenous... and waiting. Who are you in this vast multiverse, Mr. Strange?",
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"content": "The Ancient One [as Doctor Strange is being moved through various dimensions of the Multiverse] You think you know how the world works? You think that this material universe is all there is? What is real? What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses? At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts shape reality. This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life giving. Others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie ravenous... and waiting. Who are you in this vast multiverse, Mr. Strange?",
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"content": "Philosophy is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or emphasis in the realm of speculative thought. The mission of philosophy a priori is to establish the relation of manifested things to their invisible ultimate cause or nature.<br /><br />\"Philosophy,\" writes Sir William Hamilton, \"has been defined [as]: The science of things divine and human, and of the causes in which they are contained [Cicero]; The science of effects by their causes [Hobbes]; The science of sufficient reasons [Leibnitz]; The science of things possible, inasmuch as they are possible [Wolf]; The science of things evidently deduced from first principles [Descartes]; The science of truths, sensible and abstract [de Condillac]; The application of reason to its legitimate objects [Tennemann]; The science of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason [Kant]; The science of the original form of the ego or mental self [Krug]; The science of sciences [Fichte]; The science of the absolute [von Schelling]; The science of the absolute indifference of the ideal and real [von Schelling] - or, The identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel].\" (See Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic.)<br /><br />The six headings under which the disciplines of philosophy are commonly classified are: metaphysics, which deals with such abstract subjects as cosmology, theology, and the nature of being; logic, which deals with the laws governing rational thinking, or, as it has been called, \"the doctrine of fallacies\"; ethics, which is the science of morality, individual responsibility, and character - concerned chiefly with an effort to determine the nature of good; psychology, which is devoted to investigation and classification of those forms of phenomena referable to a mental origin; epistemology, which is the science concerned primarily with the nature of knowledge itself and the question of whether it may exist in an absolute form; and æsthetics, which is the science of the nature of and the reactions awakened by the beautiful, the harmonious, the elegant, and the noble.<br /><br />Plato regarded philosophy as the greatest good ever imparted by Divinity to man. In the twentieth century, however, it has become a ponderous and complicated structure of arbitrary and irreconcilable notions - yet each substantiated by almost incontestible logic. The lofty theorems of the old Academy which Iamblichus likened to the nectar and ambrosia of the gods have been so adulterated by opinion - which Heraclitus declared to be a falling sickness of the mind - that the heavenly mead would now be quite unrecognizable to this great Neo-Platonist. Convincing evidence of the increasing superficiality of modern scientific and philosophic thought is its persistent drift towards materialism. When the great astronomer Laplace was asked by Napoleon why he had not mentioned God in his Traité de la Mécanique Céleste, the mathematician naively replied: \"Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis!\"<br /><br />In his treatise on Atheism, Sir Francis Bacon tersely summarizes the situation thus: \"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.\" The Metaphysics of Aristotle opens with these words: \"All men naturally desire to know.\" To satisfy this common urge the unfolding human intellect has explored the extremities of imaginable space without and the extremities of imaginable self within, seeking to estimate the relationship between the one and the all; the effect and the cause; Nature and the groundwork of Nature; the mind and the source of the mind; the spirit and the substance of the spirit; the illusion and the reality.<br /><br />An ancient philosopher once said: \"He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone is a man among brutes. But he who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy, is a God among men.\" Man's status in the natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking. He whose mind is enslaved to his bestial instincts is philosophically not superior to the brute-, he whose rational faculties ponder human affairs is a man; and he whose intellect is elevated to the consideration of divine realities is already a demigod, for his being partakes of the luminosity with which his reason has brought him into proximity. In his encomium of \"the science of sciences\" Cicero is led to exclaim: \"O philosophy, life's guide! O searcher - out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.\"<br /><br />After Pythagoras of Samos, its founder, the Italic or Pythagorean school numbers among its most distinguished representatives Empedocles, Epicharmus, Archytas, Alcmæon, Hippasus, Philolaus, and Eudoxus. Pythagoras (580-500? B.C.) conceived mathematics to be the most sacred and exact of all the sciences, and demanded of all who came to him for study a familiarity with arithmetic, music, astronomy, and geometry. He laid special emphasis upon the philosophic life as a prerequisite to wisdom. Pythagoras was one of the first teachers to establish a community wherein all the members were of mutual assistance to one another in the common attainment of the higher sciences. He also introduced the discipline of retrospection as essential to the development of the spiritual mind. Pythagoreanism may be summarized as a system of metaphysical speculation concerning the relationships between numbers and the causal agencies of existence. This school also first expounded the theory of celestial harmonics or \"the music of the spheres.\" John Reuchlin said of Pythagoras that he taught nothing to his disciples before the discipline of silence, silence being the first rudiment of contemplation. In his Sophist, <br />Aristotle credits Empedocles with the discovery of rhetoric. Both Pythagoras and Empedocles accepted the theory of transmigration, the latter saying: \"A boy I was, then did a maid become; a plant, bird, fish, and in the vast sea swum.\" Archytas is credited with invention of the screw and the crane. Pleasure he declared to be a pestilence because it was opposed to the temperance of the mind; he considered a man without deceit to be as rare as a fish without bones. <br /><br />Platonic philosophy is based upon the postulation of three orders of being: that which moves unmoved, that which is self-moved, and that which is moved. That which is immovable but moves is anterior to that which is self-moved, which likewise is anterior to that which it moves. That in which motion is inherent cannot be separated from its motive power; it is therefore incapable of dissolution. Of such nature are the immortals. That which has motion imparted to it from another can be separated from the source of its an animating principle; it is therefore subject to dissolution. Of such nature are mortal beings. Superior to both the mortals and the immortals is that condition which continually moves yet itself is unmoved. To this constitution the power of abidance is inherent; it is therefore the Divine Permanence upon which all things are established. Being nobler even than self-motion, the unmoved Mover is the first of all dignities. The Platonic discipline was founded upon the theory that learning is really reminiscence, or the bringing into objectivity of knowledge formerly acquired by the soul in a previous state of existence. At the entrance of the Platonic school in the Academy were written the words: \"Let none ignorant of geometry enter here.\"<br /><br />Of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche it has been said that his peculiar contribution to the cause of human hope was the glad tidings that God had died of pity! The outstanding features of Nietzsche's philosophy are his doctrine of eternal recurrence and the extreme emphasis placed by him upon the will to power - a projection of Schopenhauer's will to live. Nietzsche believed the purpose of existence to be the production of a type of all-powerful individual, designated by him the superman. This superman was the product of careful culturing, for if not separated forcibly from the mass and consecrated to the production of power, the individual would sink back to the level of the deadly mediocre. Love, Nietzsche said, should be sacrificed to the production of the superman and those only should marry who are best fitted to produce this outstanding type. Nietzsche also believed in the rule of the aristocracy, both blood and breeding being essential to the establishment of this superior type. Nietzsche's doctrine did not liberate the masses; it rather placed over them supermen for whom their inferior brothers and sisters should be perfectly reconciled to die. Ethically and politically, the superman was a law unto himself. To those who understand the true meaning of power to be virtue, self-control, and truth, the ideality behind Nietzsche's theory is apparent. To the superficial, however, it is a philosophy heartless and calculating, concerned solely with the survival of the fittest.<br /><br />René Descartes stands at the head of the French school of philosophy and shares with Sir Francis Bacon the honor of founding the systems of modern science and philosophy. As Bacon based his conclusions upon observation of external things, so Descartes founded his metaphysical philosophy upon observation of internal things. Cartesianism (the philosophy of Descartes) first eliminates all things and then replaces as fundamental those premises without which existence is impossible. Descartes defined an idea as that which fills the mind when we conceive a thing. The truth of an idea must be determined by the criteria of clarity and distinctness. Hence Descartes, held that a clear and distinct idea must be true. Descartes has the distinction also of evolving his own philosophy without recourse to authority. Consequently his conclusions are built up from the simplest of premises and grow in complexity as the structure of his philosophy takes form.<br /><br />Symbolism is the language of the Mysteries; in fact it is the language not only of mysticism and philosophy but of all Nature, for every law and power active in universal procedure is manifested to the limited sense perceptions of man through the medium of symbol. Every form existing in the diversified sphere of being is symbolic of the divine activity by which it is produced. By symbols men have ever sought to communicate to each other those thoughts which transcend the limitations of language. Rejecting man-conceived dialects as inadequate and unworthy to perpetuate divine ideas, the Mysteries thus chose symbolism as a far more ingenious and ideal method of preserving their transcendental knowledge. In a single figure a symbol may both reveal and conceal, for to the wise the subject of the symbol is obvious, while to the ignorant the figure remains inscrutable. Hence, he who seeks to unveil the secret doctrine of antiquity must search for that doctrine not upon the open pages of books which might fall into the hands of the unworthy but in the place where it was originally concealed. <br /><br />Far-sighted were the initiates of antiquity. They realized that nations come and go, that empires rise and fall, and that the golden ages of art, science, and idealism are succeeded by the dark ages of superstition. With the needs of posterity foremost in mind, the sages of old went to inconceivable extremes to make certain that their knowledge should be preserved. They engraved it upon the face of mountains and concealed it within the measurements of colossal images, each of which was a geometric marvel. Their knowledge of chemistry and mathematics they hid within mythologies which the ignorant would perpetuate, or in the spans and arches of their temples which time has not entirely obliterated. They wrote in characters that neither the vandalism of men nor the ruthlessness of the elements could completely efface, today men gaze with awe and reverence upon the mighty Memnons standing alone on the sands of Egypt, or upon the strange terraced pyramids of Palanque. Mute testimonies these are of the lost arts and sciences of antiquity; and concealed this wisdom must remain until this race has learned to read the universal language - symbolism.<br /><br />Excerpt from Introduction,<br /><br />The Secret Teachings of All Ages<br /><br />Manly Palmer Hall<br /><br />Artwork by Augustus Knapp",
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"content": "Philosophy is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or emphasis in the realm of speculative thought. The mission of philosophy a priori is to establish the relation of manifested things to their invisible ultimate cause or nature.\n\n\"Philosophy,\" writes Sir William Hamilton, \"has been defined [as]: The science of things divine and human, and of the causes in which they are contained [Cicero]; The science of effects by their causes [Hobbes]; The science of sufficient reasons [Leibnitz]; The science of things possible, inasmuch as they are possible [Wolf]; The science of things evidently deduced from first principles [Descartes]; The science of truths, sensible and abstract [de Condillac]; The application of reason to its legitimate objects [Tennemann]; The science of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason [Kant]; The science of the original form of the ego or mental self [Krug]; The science of sciences [Fichte]; The science of the absolute [von Schelling]; The science of the absolute indifference of the ideal and real [von Schelling] - or, The identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel].\" (See Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic.)\n\nThe six headings under which the disciplines of philosophy are commonly classified are: metaphysics, which deals with such abstract subjects as cosmology, theology, and the nature of being; logic, which deals with the laws governing rational thinking, or, as it has been called, \"the doctrine of fallacies\"; ethics, which is the science of morality, individual responsibility, and character - concerned chiefly with an effort to determine the nature of good; psychology, which is devoted to investigation and classification of those forms of phenomena referable to a mental origin; epistemology, which is the science concerned primarily with the nature of knowledge itself and the question of whether it may exist in an absolute form; and æsthetics, which is the science of the nature of and the reactions awakened by the beautiful, the harmonious, the elegant, and the noble.\n\nPlato regarded philosophy as the greatest good ever imparted by Divinity to man. In the twentieth century, however, it has become a ponderous and complicated structure of arbitrary and irreconcilable notions - yet each substantiated by almost incontestible logic. The lofty theorems of the old Academy which Iamblichus likened to the nectar and ambrosia of the gods have been so adulterated by opinion - which Heraclitus declared to be a falling sickness of the mind - that the heavenly mead would now be quite unrecognizable to this great Neo-Platonist. Convincing evidence of the increasing superficiality of modern scientific and philosophic thought is its persistent drift towards materialism. When the great astronomer Laplace was asked by Napoleon why he had not mentioned God in his Traité de la Mécanique Céleste, the mathematician naively replied: \"Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis!\"\n\nIn his treatise on Atheism, Sir Francis Bacon tersely summarizes the situation thus: \"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.\" The Metaphysics of Aristotle opens with these words: \"All men naturally desire to know.\" To satisfy this common urge the unfolding human intellect has explored the extremities of imaginable space without and the extremities of imaginable self within, seeking to estimate the relationship between the one and the all; the effect and the cause; Nature and the groundwork of Nature; the mind and the source of the mind; the spirit and the substance of the spirit; the illusion and the reality.\n\nAn ancient philosopher once said: \"He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone is a man among brutes. But he who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy, is a God among men.\" Man's status in the natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking. He whose mind is enslaved to his bestial instincts is philosophically not superior to the brute-, he whose rational faculties ponder human affairs is a man; and he whose intellect is elevated to the consideration of divine realities is already a demigod, for his being partakes of the luminosity with which his reason has brought him into proximity. In his encomium of \"the science of sciences\" Cicero is led to exclaim: \"O philosophy, life's guide! O searcher - out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.\"\n\nAfter Pythagoras of Samos, its founder, the Italic or Pythagorean school numbers among its most distinguished representatives Empedocles, Epicharmus, Archytas, Alcmæon, Hippasus, Philolaus, and Eudoxus. Pythagoras (580-500? B.C.) conceived mathematics to be the most sacred and exact of all the sciences, and demanded of all who came to him for study a familiarity with arithmetic, music, astronomy, and geometry. He laid special emphasis upon the philosophic life as a prerequisite to wisdom. Pythagoras was one of the first teachers to establish a community wherein all the members were of mutual assistance to one another in the common attainment of the higher sciences. He also introduced the discipline of retrospection as essential to the development of the spiritual mind. Pythagoreanism may be summarized as a system of metaphysical speculation concerning the relationships between numbers and the causal agencies of existence. This school also first expounded the theory of celestial harmonics or \"the music of the spheres.\" John Reuchlin said of Pythagoras that he taught nothing to his disciples before the discipline of silence, silence being the first rudiment of contemplation. In his Sophist, \nAristotle credits Empedocles with the discovery of rhetoric. Both Pythagoras and Empedocles accepted the theory of transmigration, the latter saying: \"A boy I was, then did a maid become; a plant, bird, fish, and in the vast sea swum.\" Archytas is credited with invention of the screw and the crane. Pleasure he declared to be a pestilence because it was opposed to the temperance of the mind; he considered a man without deceit to be as rare as a fish without bones. \n\nPlatonic philosophy is based upon the postulation of three orders of being: that which moves unmoved, that which is self-moved, and that which is moved. That which is immovable but moves is anterior to that which is self-moved, which likewise is anterior to that which it moves. That in which motion is inherent cannot be separated from its motive power; it is therefore incapable of dissolution. Of such nature are the immortals. That which has motion imparted to it from another can be separated from the source of its an animating principle; it is therefore subject to dissolution. Of such nature are mortal beings. Superior to both the mortals and the immortals is that condition which continually moves yet itself is unmoved. To this constitution the power of abidance is inherent; it is therefore the Divine Permanence upon which all things are established. Being nobler even than self-motion, the unmoved Mover is the first of all dignities. The Platonic discipline was founded upon the theory that learning is really reminiscence, or the bringing into objectivity of knowledge formerly acquired by the soul in a previous state of existence. At the entrance of the Platonic school in the Academy were written the words: \"Let none ignorant of geometry enter here.\"\n\nOf Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche it has been said that his peculiar contribution to the cause of human hope was the glad tidings that God had died of pity! The outstanding features of Nietzsche's philosophy are his doctrine of eternal recurrence and the extreme emphasis placed by him upon the will to power - a projection of Schopenhauer's will to live. Nietzsche believed the purpose of existence to be the production of a type of all-powerful individual, designated by him the superman. This superman was the product of careful culturing, for if not separated forcibly from the mass and consecrated to the production of power, the individual would sink back to the level of the deadly mediocre. Love, Nietzsche said, should be sacrificed to the production of the superman and those only should marry who are best fitted to produce this outstanding type. Nietzsche also believed in the rule of the aristocracy, both blood and breeding being essential to the establishment of this superior type. Nietzsche's doctrine did not liberate the masses; it rather placed over them supermen for whom their inferior brothers and sisters should be perfectly reconciled to die. Ethically and politically, the superman was a law unto himself. To those who understand the true meaning of power to be virtue, self-control, and truth, the ideality behind Nietzsche's theory is apparent. To the superficial, however, it is a philosophy heartless and calculating, concerned solely with the survival of the fittest.\n\nRené Descartes stands at the head of the French school of philosophy and shares with Sir Francis Bacon the honor of founding the systems of modern science and philosophy. As Bacon based his conclusions upon observation of external things, so Descartes founded his metaphysical philosophy upon observation of internal things. Cartesianism (the philosophy of Descartes) first eliminates all things and then replaces as fundamental those premises without which existence is impossible. Descartes defined an idea as that which fills the mind when we conceive a thing. The truth of an idea must be determined by the criteria of clarity and distinctness. Hence Descartes, held that a clear and distinct idea must be true. Descartes has the distinction also of evolving his own philosophy without recourse to authority. Consequently his conclusions are built up from the simplest of premises and grow in complexity as the structure of his philosophy takes form.\n\nSymbolism is the language of the Mysteries; in fact it is the language not only of mysticism and philosophy but of all Nature, for every law and power active in universal procedure is manifested to the limited sense perceptions of man through the medium of symbol. Every form existing in the diversified sphere of being is symbolic of the divine activity by which it is produced. By symbols men have ever sought to communicate to each other those thoughts which transcend the limitations of language. Rejecting man-conceived dialects as inadequate and unworthy to perpetuate divine ideas, the Mysteries thus chose symbolism as a far more ingenious and ideal method of preserving their transcendental knowledge. In a single figure a symbol may both reveal and conceal, for to the wise the subject of the symbol is obvious, while to the ignorant the figure remains inscrutable. Hence, he who seeks to unveil the secret doctrine of antiquity must search for that doctrine not upon the open pages of books which might fall into the hands of the unworthy but in the place where it was originally concealed. \n\nFar-sighted were the initiates of antiquity. They realized that nations come and go, that empires rise and fall, and that the golden ages of art, science, and idealism are succeeded by the dark ages of superstition. With the needs of posterity foremost in mind, the sages of old went to inconceivable extremes to make certain that their knowledge should be preserved. They engraved it upon the face of mountains and concealed it within the measurements of colossal images, each of which was a geometric marvel. Their knowledge of chemistry and mathematics they hid within mythologies which the ignorant would perpetuate, or in the spans and arches of their temples which time has not entirely obliterated. They wrote in characters that neither the vandalism of men nor the ruthlessness of the elements could completely efface, today men gaze with awe and reverence upon the mighty Memnons standing alone on the sands of Egypt, or upon the strange terraced pyramids of Palanque. Mute testimonies these are of the lost arts and sciences of antiquity; and concealed this wisdom must remain until this race has learned to read the universal language - symbolism.\n\nExcerpt from Introduction,\n\nThe Secret Teachings of All Ages\n\nManly Palmer Hall\n\nArtwork by Augustus Knapp",
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"content": "We feel it is necessary to emphasize the fact that not everyone is born with an Astral Body, despite what common New Age disinformation may tell you. The other bodies must be developed through intense spiritual discipline and sexual transmutation. The few that are born with these additional bodies had attained them through spiritual progress in their previous life. If one wants to travel the Astral Plane then one would have to successfully develop their Astral Body, and this takes much effort and devotion.<br /><br />\"The authentic and legitimate Astral, Mental and Causal Vehicles are born of Sexual Magic. It is obvious that during the copula between man and woman, the aura of the husband and wife is totally opened. Then, within our own depths, marvelous psychic fertilizations can be performed. The final outcome becomes precisely the birth of our legitimate Astral, and later the birth of the other bodies in successive order.\" - Samael Aun Weor<br /><br />Just as ordinary physical bodies are born of sex between a man and a woman, so the solar bodies can only be constructed by individuals practicing Sexual Magic (retaining and transmuting the sexual energy according to God's will during the sexual act) with a spouse. While single individuals practicing Chastity, transmutation and Meditation can embark upon the work of establishing psychological equilibrium, eliminating their ego and passing through the Minor Mysteries, Sexual Magic is required to awaken the Kundalini and enter into the Major Mysteries, during which the solar bodies are constructed. The gradual construction of these bodies is the true meaning of the phrase \"to be born again.\"<br /><br />Within the Major Mysteries, the initiate must pass over the Three Mountains in order to reach the Absolute and attain complete development as a human being. The solar bodies are constructed on the First Mountain, also called the Mountain of Initiation, which consist of two parts: the serpents of fire (in which the solar bodies are created) and the serpents of light (in which the solar bodies are perfected). Each of these serpents is raised, one at a time, through the spinal canal of the initiate (just as Moses raised the serpent on the staff in the wilderness) as he or she passes successive ordeals and tests.<br /><a href=\"https://gnosticteachings.org/faqs/spirituality/1773-what-are-the-solar-bodies.html\" target=\"_blank\">https://gnosticteachings.org/faqs/spirituality/1773-what-are-the-solar-bodies.html</a>",
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"content": "We feel it is necessary to emphasize the fact that not everyone is born with an Astral Body, despite what common New Age disinformation may tell you. The other bodies must be developed through intense spiritual discipline and sexual transmutation. The few that are born with these additional bodies had attained them through spiritual progress in their previous life. If one wants to travel the Astral Plane then one would have to successfully develop their Astral Body, and this takes much effort and devotion.\n\n\"The authentic and legitimate Astral, Mental and Causal Vehicles are born of Sexual Magic. It is obvious that during the copula between man and woman, the aura of the husband and wife is totally opened. Then, within our own depths, marvelous psychic fertilizations can be performed. The final outcome becomes precisely the birth of our legitimate Astral, and later the birth of the other bodies in successive order.\" - Samael Aun Weor\n\nJust as ordinary physical bodies are born of sex between a man and a woman, so the solar bodies can only be constructed by individuals practicing Sexual Magic (retaining and transmuting the sexual energy according to God's will during the sexual act) with a spouse. While single individuals practicing Chastity, transmutation and Meditation can embark upon the work of establishing psychological equilibrium, eliminating their ego and passing through the Minor Mysteries, Sexual Magic is required to awaken the Kundalini and enter into the Major Mysteries, during which the solar bodies are constructed. The gradual construction of these bodies is the true meaning of the phrase \"to be born again.\"\n\nWithin the Major Mysteries, the initiate must pass over the Three Mountains in order to reach the Absolute and attain complete development as a human being. The solar bodies are constructed on the First Mountain, also called the Mountain of Initiation, which consist of two parts: the serpents of fire (in which the solar bodies are created) and the serpents of light (in which the solar bodies are perfected). Each of these serpents is raised, one at a time, through the spinal canal of the initiate (just as Moses raised the serpent on the staff in the wilderness) as he or she passes successive ordeals and tests.\nhttps://gnosticteachings.org/faqs/spirituality/1773-what-are-the-solar-bodies.html",
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"content": "Today is the hope of the world. Here and now we are welding that great chain of tomorrows which extends from the instant to infinity. We live not for ourselves alone but for all futurity. Our accomplishments survive us, for long after we have descended into the earth the orders which we have established shall dominate the activities of men. <br /><br />The world is an ancestral shrine filled with the mortuary tablets of the honored dead. We bow before our illustrious progenitors. We are the substance of their aspirations, the consummation of their dreams, for today is the focal point of time. We are all that has been about to be projected into all that shall be. Each human soul holds eternity in suspension. <br /><br />Recognizing this truth, several modern scientists have formulated the theory that immortality is achieved through a succession of lives—that the father achieves immortality in his son, the son in his progeny, and so on to the end of generation. The torch of life which each expiring personality hands on to another does not go out; it is immortal, but he who bears it must perish by the way. <br /><br />Men are but incidents in the flow of life, yet they have a strange power, for while they cannot cause the vital flame to blaze up from nothingness, they are empowered to snuff it out, and when generations cease the countless ages die together.<br /><br />To be is to be immortal, for that which has been can never utterly cease. The past hovers in the air like a mirage. Men feel its presence; they breath it in, and enveloped by it live their little now. Upon the surface of their polished mirrors the ancient Magi caught faint visions of forgotten times. Within the next century we shall discover that history is written in the air; that so-called space itself is photographic, preserving as on a sensitized plate the varied activities of created things. <br /><br />Egypt as a physical empire has long since crumbled into dust, but upon each minute particle of the atmosphere the glory of ancient Egypt is preserved for all time. Men speak words, and their words seemingly vanish into nothingness, but in the living substances of the universe these selfsame words are traced in everlasting characters to be read in some distant time by men as yet unborn. <br /><br />Thoughts unuttered are not wholly lost, nor do dreams perish because their dreamer dares not give them speech. Somewhere in the infinite vistas of space, impressed as it were upon the memory of the infinite and sharing together a common immortality, all aspirations, all visions, and all deeds await the day when men with unfolding reason will bind all time into a common now.<br /><br />Excerpt from Lectures On Ancient Philosophy, The Goal of Philosophy, page 457<br /><br />Manly Palmer Hall",
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"content": "Today is the hope of the world. Here and now we are welding that great chain of tomorrows which extends from the instant to infinity. We live not for ourselves alone but for all futurity. Our accomplishments survive us, for long after we have descended into the earth the orders which we have established shall dominate the activities of men. \n\nThe world is an ancestral shrine filled with the mortuary tablets of the honored dead. We bow before our illustrious progenitors. We are the substance of their aspirations, the consummation of their dreams, for today is the focal point of time. We are all that has been about to be projected into all that shall be. Each human soul holds eternity in suspension. \n\nRecognizing this truth, several modern scientists have formulated the theory that immortality is achieved through a succession of lives—that the father achieves immortality in his son, the son in his progeny, and so on to the end of generation. The torch of life which each expiring personality hands on to another does not go out; it is immortal, but he who bears it must perish by the way. \n\nMen are but incidents in the flow of life, yet they have a strange power, for while they cannot cause the vital flame to blaze up from nothingness, they are empowered to snuff it out, and when generations cease the countless ages die together.\n\nTo be is to be immortal, for that which has been can never utterly cease. The past hovers in the air like a mirage. Men feel its presence; they breath it in, and enveloped by it live their little now. Upon the surface of their polished mirrors the ancient Magi caught faint visions of forgotten times. Within the next century we shall discover that history is written in the air; that so-called space itself is photographic, preserving as on a sensitized plate the varied activities of created things. \n\nEgypt as a physical empire has long since crumbled into dust, but upon each minute particle of the atmosphere the glory of ancient Egypt is preserved for all time. Men speak words, and their words seemingly vanish into nothingness, but in the living substances of the universe these selfsame words are traced in everlasting characters to be read in some distant time by men as yet unborn. \n\nThoughts unuttered are not wholly lost, nor do dreams perish because their dreamer dares not give them speech. Somewhere in the infinite vistas of space, impressed as it were upon the memory of the infinite and sharing together a common immortality, all aspirations, all visions, and all deeds await the day when men with unfolding reason will bind all time into a common now.\n\nExcerpt from Lectures On Ancient Philosophy, The Goal of Philosophy, page 457\n\nManly Palmer Hall",
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"content": "\"Today we base maturity largely on chronological age - a birthday. When we reach majority, we are supposed to be grown up. This is a totally illusionary point of view.\"<br /><br />~ Manly P. Hall<br />To Carry Burdens in a Gracious Spirit, 1970",
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"content": "\"Today we base maturity largely on chronological age - a birthday. When we reach majority, we are supposed to be grown up. This is a totally illusionary point of view.\"\n\n~ Manly P. Hall\nTo Carry Burdens in a Gracious Spirit, 1970",
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"content": "A description of the lost Atlantis was written by Plato; it introduces the league formed by the ten benevolent kings who ruled over the lesser nations and the three great continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and who bound themselves by oath to obey the divine laws <br />of enduring empire... <br />This was the philosophic democracy, with all men having the right to become wise through self-discipline and self-improvement, thus achieving the only aristocracy recognized by Natural Law... <br />The Atlantis story continues to the later decision of the kings to use their united power to enslave all the peoples of the earth, and the consequent destruction of Atlantis by earthquake and fire...interpreted politically, it is the story of the breaking up of the ideal pattern of government. <br /><br />The destruction of Atlantis, as described by Plato in the Critias, can be interpreted as a political fable. The tradition of the Lost Empire as descended from Solon was enlarged and embellished according to the formulas of the Orphic theology; but it does not follow necessarily that Plato intended to disparage the idea that a lost continent had actually existed west of Europe. Plato was a philosopher; he saw in the account of the fall of Atlantis an admirable opportunity to summarize his convictions concerning government and politics. <br /><br />The Critias first describes the blessed state of the Atlantean people under the benevolent rulership of ten kings who were bound together in a league. These kings were monarchs over seven islands and three great continents. From the fable we can infer that the ten rulers of the Atlantic league were philosopher kings, endowed with all virtues and wise guardians of the public good. These kings obeyed the laws of the divine father of their house, Poseidon, god of the seas. <br /><br />In the capital city of Atlantis stood the temple of Poseidon, and in it a golden figure of the god. In this shrine also stood a column of precious substance inscribed with the laws of enduring empire. The ten kings took their oath together to obey these laws, and they chose one of their number, usually of the family of Atlas, to be the chief of their league. It was written on the column of the law that the ten kings of Atlantis should not take up arms against each other, for any reason. If one of them should break this law the other nine were to unite against him to preserve the peace. In all matters concerning the public good the ten kings were to deliberate together, and each should be mindful of the just needs of the others; for they were the members of one body and regents over the lands of a blessed god. The kings had not the power of life or death over any of their subjects except with the consent of the majority of the ten; and each was responsible to the whole league for his conduct in the administration of his own State. In this way Plato describes the government of the Golden Age, in which men live on earth according to the laws of heaven. <br /><br />By the three great continents of Atlantis are to be understood, Europe, Asia, and Africa; and by the seven islands, all the lesser peoples of the earth. The league of the ten kings is the cooperative commonwealth of mankind, the natural and proper form of human government. The Atlantis, therefore, is the archetype or the pattern of right government, which existed in ancient days but was destroyed by the selfishness and ignorance of men. Plato, it must be remembered, was a monarchist by philosophic conviction, but his ideal king was the wise man perfect in the virtues and the natural ruler of those less informed than himself. This king was the father of his people, impersonal and unselfish, dedicated to the public good, a servant of both the gods and his fellow men. This king was descended of a divine race; that is, he belonged to the Order of the Illumined; for those who come to a state of wisdom then belong to the family of the heroes - perfected human beings. Plato's monarchy was therefore a philosophic democracy; for all men had the right to become wise through self-discipline and self-improvement. One who achieved this state was by virtue of his own action a superior man, and this superiority was the only aristocracy recognized by Natural Law. <br /><br />Competition is natural to the ignorant; and cooperation is natural to the wise. Obeying the pattern established by the gods, the divine kings bound themselves into the common league to obey its laws, preserve the peace, and punish any whose ambition might impel them to tyranny or conquest. Here then, is a pattern of world government to insure the prosperity of all peoples and activate the preservation of the peace. Plato describes at some length the prosperity of the Atlantic Isles under this benevolent rulership. The citizens were happy, and poverty was unknown. A world trade was established, and the ships of the Atlantean marine traveled the seven seas, bringing rich treasures to the motherland. There was little crime; the arts flourished; and the sciences were cultivated in great universities. Men had no enemies, and war was unknown. The god Poseidon guarded the destinies of his domains and favored the Atlantic Empire with a good climate and fertile soil. Men followed the occupations which they preferred and lived a communal existence, together sharing the fruits of their labors. It was Plato's conviction that the human being was not created merely to engage in barter and exchange, but rather to perfect himself as the noblest of the animals, endowed with reason and the natural ruler of the material world. <br /><br />The Critias then describes the gradual change that came about in the course of the ages. In the beginning the Atlanteans saw clearly that their wealth and prosperity increased as a result of friendship. But gradually the divine portion of their consciousness began to fade away in them; their souls became diluted with a mortal admixture and human nature gained ascendency. They became unseemly and lost those spiritual virtues which were the fairest of their precious gifts. It is the story of how man departed from the perfect pattern of his conduct, and in the end denied the very truths which were the foundations of his strength. With the loss of his spiritual perception, material ambitions increased, and the desire for conquest was born. Men yearned after that which they had not earned, and gazed with covetous eyes upon the goods of others. The rulers of the State were corrupted by the common evil; the ten kings were no longer friends; they no longer conferred together in the temple of Poseidon to decide all matters under the common oath. Thus was the great league dissolved by selfishness and ambition. It was then that war came into being, and with it tyranny and oppression, and despotism and the exploitation of peoples. <br /><br />At last the kings of Atlantis decided to use their common power to enslave all the peoples of the earth. They gathered a vast army and attacked Europe from the sea, even going so far as to besiege the Athenian States. And so they broke the law of the gods; for the twelve deities had so divided the earth that to each race and nation was given its proper part. Zeus, father of the gods, who carries in his hand the thunderbolts of divine retribution, perceived the evil of the time, and resolved to punish the arrogance of the Atlanteans. But even Olympus is a commonwealth, and the other eleven gods were summoned to the council hall of the immortals. \"When all the gods had assembled in conference, Zeus arose among them and addressed them thus - \" ... it is with this line that Plato's story of Atlantis ends; and the words of Zeus remain unknown. But the results of the conference are not left in doubt. Zeus hurled his thunderbolts against the empire of the sea, shaking it with earthquakes and then destroying it by horrible combustion. The only records that remained were in vague traditions and two columns set up under the temple at Sais. <br /><br />The destruction of Atlantis can be interpreted politically as the breaking up of the ideal pattern of government. So complete was this destruction, that men forgot there is a better way of life, and since have accepted the evils of war and crime and poverty as inevitable. The world lost too all sense of its own unity; each man's hand was thereafter raised against his neighbor. The perfect state disappeared under a deluge of politics; the priests of Poseidon gave way to the priesthood of Mammon. <br /><br />Plato's political vision was for the restoration of the Empire of the Golden Age. The old ways of the gods must be restored, he was convinced, if human beings are to be preserved from the corruptions which they have brought upon themselves. Plato sought this end when he established his university at Athens - the first school of formal education in history. Here men were taught the great truths of religion, philosophy, science, and politics, to restore to them the vision of the perfect State. <br /><br />The old Atlantis was gone, dissolved in a sea of human doubts. But the philosophic empire would come again, as a democracy of wise men. <br /><br />Two thousand years later Lord Bacon re-stated this vision in his New Atlantis.<br /><br />Excerpt from The Secret Destiny Of America, 5. The Ancient League of Nations<br /><br />Manly Palmer Hal",
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"content": "A description of the lost Atlantis was written by Plato; it introduces the league formed by the ten benevolent kings who ruled over the lesser nations and the three great continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and who bound themselves by oath to obey the divine laws \nof enduring empire... \nThis was the philosophic democracy, with all men having the right to become wise through self-discipline and self-improvement, thus achieving the only aristocracy recognized by Natural Law... \nThe Atlantis story continues to the later decision of the kings to use their united power to enslave all the peoples of the earth, and the consequent destruction of Atlantis by earthquake and fire...interpreted politically, it is the story of the breaking up of the ideal pattern of government. \n\nThe destruction of Atlantis, as described by Plato in the Critias, can be interpreted as a political fable. The tradition of the Lost Empire as descended from Solon was enlarged and embellished according to the formulas of the Orphic theology; but it does not follow necessarily that Plato intended to disparage the idea that a lost continent had actually existed west of Europe. Plato was a philosopher; he saw in the account of the fall of Atlantis an admirable opportunity to summarize his convictions concerning government and politics. \n\nThe Critias first describes the blessed state of the Atlantean people under the benevolent rulership of ten kings who were bound together in a league. These kings were monarchs over seven islands and three great continents. From the fable we can infer that the ten rulers of the Atlantic league were philosopher kings, endowed with all virtues and wise guardians of the public good. These kings obeyed the laws of the divine father of their house, Poseidon, god of the seas. \n\nIn the capital city of Atlantis stood the temple of Poseidon, and in it a golden figure of the god. In this shrine also stood a column of precious substance inscribed with the laws of enduring empire. The ten kings took their oath together to obey these laws, and they chose one of their number, usually of the family of Atlas, to be the chief of their league. It was written on the column of the law that the ten kings of Atlantis should not take up arms against each other, for any reason. If one of them should break this law the other nine were to unite against him to preserve the peace. In all matters concerning the public good the ten kings were to deliberate together, and each should be mindful of the just needs of the others; for they were the members of one body and regents over the lands of a blessed god. The kings had not the power of life or death over any of their subjects except with the consent of the majority of the ten; and each was responsible to the whole league for his conduct in the administration of his own State. In this way Plato describes the government of the Golden Age, in which men live on earth according to the laws of heaven. \n\nBy the three great continents of Atlantis are to be understood, Europe, Asia, and Africa; and by the seven islands, all the lesser peoples of the earth. The league of the ten kings is the cooperative commonwealth of mankind, the natural and proper form of human government. The Atlantis, therefore, is the archetype or the pattern of right government, which existed in ancient days but was destroyed by the selfishness and ignorance of men. Plato, it must be remembered, was a monarchist by philosophic conviction, but his ideal king was the wise man perfect in the virtues and the natural ruler of those less informed than himself. This king was the father of his people, impersonal and unselfish, dedicated to the public good, a servant of both the gods and his fellow men. This king was descended of a divine race; that is, he belonged to the Order of the Illumined; for those who come to a state of wisdom then belong to the family of the heroes - perfected human beings. Plato's monarchy was therefore a philosophic democracy; for all men had the right to become wise through self-discipline and self-improvement. One who achieved this state was by virtue of his own action a superior man, and this superiority was the only aristocracy recognized by Natural Law. \n\nCompetition is natural to the ignorant; and cooperation is natural to the wise. Obeying the pattern established by the gods, the divine kings bound themselves into the common league to obey its laws, preserve the peace, and punish any whose ambition might impel them to tyranny or conquest. Here then, is a pattern of world government to insure the prosperity of all peoples and activate the preservation of the peace. Plato describes at some length the prosperity of the Atlantic Isles under this benevolent rulership. The citizens were happy, and poverty was unknown. A world trade was established, and the ships of the Atlantean marine traveled the seven seas, bringing rich treasures to the motherland. There was little crime; the arts flourished; and the sciences were cultivated in great universities. Men had no enemies, and war was unknown. The god Poseidon guarded the destinies of his domains and favored the Atlantic Empire with a good climate and fertile soil. Men followed the occupations which they preferred and lived a communal existence, together sharing the fruits of their labors. It was Plato's conviction that the human being was not created merely to engage in barter and exchange, but rather to perfect himself as the noblest of the animals, endowed with reason and the natural ruler of the material world. \n\nThe Critias then describes the gradual change that came about in the course of the ages. In the beginning the Atlanteans saw clearly that their wealth and prosperity increased as a result of friendship. But gradually the divine portion of their consciousness began to fade away in them; their souls became diluted with a mortal admixture and human nature gained ascendency. They became unseemly and lost those spiritual virtues which were the fairest of their precious gifts. It is the story of how man departed from the perfect pattern of his conduct, and in the end denied the very truths which were the foundations of his strength. With the loss of his spiritual perception, material ambitions increased, and the desire for conquest was born. Men yearned after that which they had not earned, and gazed with covetous eyes upon the goods of others. The rulers of the State were corrupted by the common evil; the ten kings were no longer friends; they no longer conferred together in the temple of Poseidon to decide all matters under the common oath. Thus was the great league dissolved by selfishness and ambition. It was then that war came into being, and with it tyranny and oppression, and despotism and the exploitation of peoples. \n\nAt last the kings of Atlantis decided to use their common power to enslave all the peoples of the earth. They gathered a vast army and attacked Europe from the sea, even going so far as to besiege the Athenian States. And so they broke the law of the gods; for the twelve deities had so divided the earth that to each race and nation was given its proper part. Zeus, father of the gods, who carries in his hand the thunderbolts of divine retribution, perceived the evil of the time, and resolved to punish the arrogance of the Atlanteans. But even Olympus is a commonwealth, and the other eleven gods were summoned to the council hall of the immortals. \"When all the gods had assembled in conference, Zeus arose among them and addressed them thus - \" ... it is with this line that Plato's story of Atlantis ends; and the words of Zeus remain unknown. But the results of the conference are not left in doubt. Zeus hurled his thunderbolts against the empire of the sea, shaking it with earthquakes and then destroying it by horrible combustion. The only records that remained were in vague traditions and two columns set up under the temple at Sais. \n\nThe destruction of Atlantis can be interpreted politically as the breaking up of the ideal pattern of government. So complete was this destruction, that men forgot there is a better way of life, and since have accepted the evils of war and crime and poverty as inevitable. The world lost too all sense of its own unity; each man's hand was thereafter raised against his neighbor. The perfect state disappeared under a deluge of politics; the priests of Poseidon gave way to the priesthood of Mammon. \n\nPlato's political vision was for the restoration of the Empire of the Golden Age. The old ways of the gods must be restored, he was convinced, if human beings are to be preserved from the corruptions which they have brought upon themselves. Plato sought this end when he established his university at Athens - the first school of formal education in history. Here men were taught the great truths of religion, philosophy, science, and politics, to restore to them the vision of the perfect State. \n\nThe old Atlantis was gone, dissolved in a sea of human doubts. But the philosophic empire would come again, as a democracy of wise men. \n\nTwo thousand years later Lord Bacon re-stated this vision in his New Atlantis.\n\nExcerpt from The Secret Destiny Of America, 5. The Ancient League of Nations\n\nManly Palmer Hal",
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"content": "While the unicorn is mentioned several times in Scripture, no proof has yet been discovered of its existence. There are a number of drinking horns in various museums presumably fashioned from its spike. It is reasonably certain, however, that these drinking vessels were really made either from the tusks of some large mammal or the horn of a rhinoceros. J. P. Lundy believes that the horn of the unicorn symbolizes the hem of salvation mentioned by St. Luke which, pricking the hearts of men, turns them to a consideration of salvation through Christ. Mediæval Christian mystics employed the unicorn as an emblem of Christ, and this creature must therefore signify the spiritual life in man. The single horn of the unicorn may represent the pineal gland, or third eye, which is the spiritual cognition center in the brain. The unicorn was adopted by the Mysteries as a symbol of the illumined spiritual nature of the initiate, the horn with which it defends itself being the flaming sword of the spiritual doctrine against, which nothing can prevail.<br /><br />Manly Palmer Hall<br /><br />Artwork by Lori Menna",
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"content": "While the unicorn is mentioned several times in Scripture, no proof has yet been discovered of its existence. There are a number of drinking horns in various museums presumably fashioned from its spike. It is reasonably certain, however, that these drinking vessels were really made either from the tusks of some large mammal or the horn of a rhinoceros. J. P. Lundy believes that the horn of the unicorn symbolizes the hem of salvation mentioned by St. Luke which, pricking the hearts of men, turns them to a consideration of salvation through Christ. Mediæval Christian mystics employed the unicorn as an emblem of Christ, and this creature must therefore signify the spiritual life in man. The single horn of the unicorn may represent the pineal gland, or third eye, which is the spiritual cognition center in the brain. The unicorn was adopted by the Mysteries as a symbol of the illumined spiritual nature of the initiate, the horn with which it defends itself being the flaming sword of the spiritual doctrine against, which nothing can prevail.\n\nManly Palmer Hall\n\nArtwork by Lori Menna",
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"content": "The time will come when the secret wisdom shall again be the dominating religious and philosophical urge of the world. The day is at hand when the doom of dogma shall be sounded. The great theological Tower of Babel, with its confusion of tongues, was built with bricks of mud and the mortar of slime. Out of the cold ashes of lifeless creeds, however, shall rise Phoenix-like the ancient Mysteries. No other institution so completely satisfied the religious needs of humanity for since the destruction of the Mysteries there has never been a religious edifice wherein Plato could have worshipped!<br /><br />The Dying God shall rise again! The secret room in the House of the Hidden Places shall be rediscovered! The Pyramid shall yet stand as the ideal emblem of solidarity, aspiration, inspiration, resurrection and regeneration! As the passing sands of time bury civilizations beneath their weight, the Pyramid shall remain as the visible covenant between that eternal wisdom and the world. The time may yet come when the chants of the illumined shall be heard again in its ancient passageways and the Master of the Hidden House await in the Silent Place for the coming of the seeker after that spiritual truth which the modern world needs so badly and of which it knows so little.<br /><br />Excerpt from The Phoenix<br /><br />Manly Palmer Hall",
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"content": "The time will come when the secret wisdom shall again be the dominating religious and philosophical urge of the world. The day is at hand when the doom of dogma shall be sounded. The great theological Tower of Babel, with its confusion of tongues, was built with bricks of mud and the mortar of slime. Out of the cold ashes of lifeless creeds, however, shall rise Phoenix-like the ancient Mysteries. No other institution so completely satisfied the religious needs of humanity for since the destruction of the Mysteries there has never been a religious edifice wherein Plato could have worshipped!\n\nThe Dying God shall rise again! The secret room in the House of the Hidden Places shall be rediscovered! The Pyramid shall yet stand as the ideal emblem of solidarity, aspiration, inspiration, resurrection and regeneration! As the passing sands of time bury civilizations beneath their weight, the Pyramid shall remain as the visible covenant between that eternal wisdom and the world. The time may yet come when the chants of the illumined shall be heard again in its ancient passageways and the Master of the Hidden House await in the Silent Place for the coming of the seeker after that spiritual truth which the modern world needs so badly and of which it knows so little.\n\nExcerpt from The Phoenix\n\nManly Palmer Hall",
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"content": "Observation may be considered as the process of seeing with the mind rather than with the eye. It involves an analysis of the object beheld and the effort to sense or conceive its intrinsic nature. The end of observation is the ability to cognize the life behind the form, the fact behind the fancy, the truth behind the symbol, and the Self behind the not-self. Through observation one is able to discover wisdom in the words of fools and foolishness in the words of most wise men. Observation, furthermore, is the ability to comprehend the pervading wholeness. He who sees may see the parts, but he who observes closely may glimpse the divine cement that binds the fractions together. We live in a world of men who see in part and are seen in part; who think in part, hope in part, fear in part. The universe is regarded as fragmentary or partitive because we lack the faculty of seeing the wholeness of things. Observation is that transcendent faculty which is able to grasp the wholeness of things in its span of comprehension, whereas ordinary sight is simply the ability to analyze the fragments. Thus sight differs from observation as widely as analysis differs from synthesis.<br /><br />Excerpt from Lectures On Ancient Philosophy, The Disciplines of Salvation, page 131<br /><br />Manly Palmer Hall<br /><br />Artwork by Ivor Richards",
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"content": "Observation may be considered as the process of seeing with the mind rather than with the eye. It involves an analysis of the object beheld and the effort to sense or conceive its intrinsic nature. The end of observation is the ability to cognize the life behind the form, the fact behind the fancy, the truth behind the symbol, and the Self behind the not-self. Through observation one is able to discover wisdom in the words of fools and foolishness in the words of most wise men. Observation, furthermore, is the ability to comprehend the pervading wholeness. He who sees may see the parts, but he who observes closely may glimpse the divine cement that binds the fractions together. We live in a world of men who see in part and are seen in part; who think in part, hope in part, fear in part. The universe is regarded as fragmentary or partitive because we lack the faculty of seeing the wholeness of things. Observation is that transcendent faculty which is able to grasp the wholeness of things in its span of comprehension, whereas ordinary sight is simply the ability to analyze the fragments. Thus sight differs from observation as widely as analysis differs from synthesis.\n\nExcerpt from Lectures On Ancient Philosophy, The Disciplines of Salvation, page 131\n\nManly Palmer Hall\n\nArtwork by Ivor Richards",
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"content": "The individual who does not think important thoughts will think unimportant ones. The individual whose mind is untrained will fall into criticisms, condemnations and arguments. ~ Manly P. Hall (The Pleasures of the Thoughtful Life 1971, p.7)",
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"content": "The individual who does not think important thoughts will think unimportant ones. The individual whose mind is untrained will fall into criticisms, condemnations and arguments. ~ Manly P. Hall (The Pleasures of the Thoughtful Life 1971, p.7)",
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"content": "Many ages have elapsed since the Egyptian Priest King passed through the pillars of Thebes. Ages before the sinking of Atlantis, thousands of years before the Christian Era, Egypt was a land of great truths. The hand of the Great White Brotherhood was held out to the Empire of the Nile, and the ancient pyramid passages resounded with the chants of the Initiates. It was then that the Pharaoh, now called half-human, half-divine, reigned in ancient Egypt. Pharaoh is the Egyptian word for king. Many of the later Pharaohs were degenerate and of little account. It is only the early Pharaohs we now list among the Priest Kings.<br /><br />Try to picture for a moment the great Hall of Luxor —its inscriptive columns holding up domes of solid granite, each column carved with the histories of the gods. There at the upper end of the chamber sat the Pharaoh of the Nile in his robes of state; around him his counsellors, chief among them the priest of the temple. An imposing spectacle it was: the gigantic frame of the later Atlantean, robed in gold and priceless jewels; on his head the crown of the North and South, the double empire of the ancient; on his forehead the coiled serpent of the Initiate, the serpent which was raised in the wilderness that all who looked upon it might live; that sleeping serpent power in man, which coiled head downward around the tree of life, drove him from the garden of the Lord, but which raised upon the Cross, became the symbol of the Christ.<br /><br />The Pharaoh was an Initiate of Scorpio, and the serpent is the transmuted Scorpio energy, which working upward in the regenerated individual is called the Kundalini. This serpent was the sign of Initiation. It meant that within him the serpent had been raised, for the true Pharaoh was a priest of God, as well as a master of men. There he sat upon the cube altar throne, indicating his mastery over the four elements of his physical body-a judge of the living and of the dead, who in spite of all his power and glory, having about him the grandeur of the world's greatest empire, still bowed in humble supplication to the will of the gods. In his hands he carries the triple sceptre of the Nile, the Shepherd's Crook, the Anubis-headed Staff and the Flail or Whip.<br /><br />Except from Initiates of the Flame<br /><br />Manly Palmer Hall",
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"content": "Many ages have elapsed since the Egyptian Priest King passed through the pillars of Thebes. Ages before the sinking of Atlantis, thousands of years before the Christian Era, Egypt was a land of great truths. The hand of the Great White Brotherhood was held out to the Empire of the Nile, and the ancient pyramid passages resounded with the chants of the Initiates. It was then that the Pharaoh, now called half-human, half-divine, reigned in ancient Egypt. Pharaoh is the Egyptian word for king. Many of the later Pharaohs were degenerate and of little account. It is only the early Pharaohs we now list among the Priest Kings.\n\nTry to picture for a moment the great Hall of Luxor —its inscriptive columns holding up domes of solid granite, each column carved with the histories of the gods. There at the upper end of the chamber sat the Pharaoh of the Nile in his robes of state; around him his counsellors, chief among them the priest of the temple. An imposing spectacle it was: the gigantic frame of the later Atlantean, robed in gold and priceless jewels; on his head the crown of the North and South, the double empire of the ancient; on his forehead the coiled serpent of the Initiate, the serpent which was raised in the wilderness that all who looked upon it might live; that sleeping serpent power in man, which coiled head downward around the tree of life, drove him from the garden of the Lord, but which raised upon the Cross, became the symbol of the Christ.\n\nThe Pharaoh was an Initiate of Scorpio, and the serpent is the transmuted Scorpio energy, which working upward in the regenerated individual is called the Kundalini. This serpent was the sign of Initiation. It meant that within him the serpent had been raised, for the true Pharaoh was a priest of God, as well as a master of men. There he sat upon the cube altar throne, indicating his mastery over the four elements of his physical body-a judge of the living and of the dead, who in spite of all his power and glory, having about him the grandeur of the world's greatest empire, still bowed in humble supplication to the will of the gods. In his hands he carries the triple sceptre of the Nile, the Shepherd's Crook, the Anubis-headed Staff and the Flail or Whip.\n\nExcept from Initiates of the Flame\n\nManly Palmer Hall",
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