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Extract from "The Knowledge of Reality":
What Most People Do Not Know
An eminent modern scientist answered the question whether mankind has as yet succeeded in exploring one per cent of reality: "No, not even one ten thousandth of one per cent".
That is, not even one millionth! One certainly has respect for such a scientist. Nobody makes a greater impression than he who realizes man’s immense ignorance about life. For it is obvious to anyone who has assimilated what theology, philosophy, and science have to tell us about reality that the conclusions drawn are mere hypotheses (a euphemism for guesswork and supposition!). Or, as Professor Whittaker has put it: "We know that there is something we call matter, but not what it is; we know that it moves, but not why it does so, and that is the sum of all our knowledge." That is true. Science cannot answer the questions of What? and Why?, which already Newton realized. To rid themselves of the evidence of this too embarrassing ignorance, modern philosophers try to discard all reality concepts, calling just them fictions!
There are plenty of authorities in theology, philosophy, and science, who will pass judgements on everything and make dogmatic assertions about matters which they have not even examined. They know a priori that "this" cannot be true, because it conflicts with what they read in their paper pope or "conflicts with the laws of nature"; as if their paper pope had solved the problem of existence for them, amounted to a world-view that explains reality and solves the basic problems of knowledge! As if science could decide what "conflicts with the laws of nature" and what does not, when it has not explored even one per cent of them!
It is important that we should not restrict ourselves to what has been investigated, that we should not reject any one idea just because to us it seems alien, improbable, or unprofitable. It is important to investigate any new possibility of knowledge. We know too little to be able to afford to neglect the least chance of expanding our knowledge. Most new ideas at first sight appear improbable to most people. Those who consider themselves able to judge accept only what fits in with their own thought system. But they ought to realize that if that system is so correct, they should be all but omniscient.
The scientists seem ever
oblivious to the fact that their hypotheses and theories are just temporary.
They flatter themselves that they are free from dogmatism, that their thinking
is free and straight. But the history of science has always borne witness to
the opposite. It still is all too frequently seen that scientific authorities
reject what is seemingly improbable, strange, and unknown (as every
revolutionary idea has been) without examining it. The scientists call what
they cannot explain delusion, the religious call it god.
There is something seemingly incorrigibly, ineradicably idiotic in this: in
refusing to examine.
The true seeker, who has recognized mankind’s total disorientation and intellectual helplessness as to the problems of existence, examines everything, not caring whether the ruling authorities have dismissed it categorically or parroting public opinion ridicules and disdains, as it does everything that it does not know or cannot comprehend.
To try to explain to the uninitiated something of which they are totally unaware, would seem a hopeless task, especially when it is something that to them appears strange, improbable, and unreal.
Mankind has for so long been fed with so many religious, philosophic, scientific, and, in the last decades, also occult attempts to explain existence that most people refuse to study the true knowledge when it is offered. They are content to explore only the world that is visible to them. General doubt whether there is any other reality is gaining ground more and more.
But suppose there is a knowledge of existence that to the learned will seem the height of madness. Suppose Kant, the philosopher, was mistaken in claiming that we shall never come to know anything about the inner reality of nature. Suppose the Indian rishis, the Egyptian hierophants, the gnostic theurgists, the original, true Rosicrucians were not such mystagogues, charlatans, and deceivers as the learned have tried to make them.
Characteristic of the learned world today is its contempt for everything we have inherited from our fathers, as if all mankind’s experiences hitherto were nonsensical and useless in life.
Scientific research has come far within its own limited domains, but only the élite among the scientists are beginning to realize how little mankind knows about the whole.
What do the paleontologists know about the antiquity of man? Do they know that there have been fully developed men on our planet for 21 million years?
What do the geologists know about the two hemispherical continents, Lemuria and Atlantis, now lying on the bottom of the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean; and what do the antiquarians know about their civilizations?
What do the archaeologists know about cultures nearer to us in time than those mentioned: the Indian culture of some 50.000 years ago, the Egyptian of 40.000 years ago, the Peruvian of 15.000 years ago, or even that of ancient Greece of 12.000 years ago?
What do the learned know about the different secret knowledge orders that have existed in many countries? What do they know about the order instituted by Vyasa in India some 45.000 years ago, or that by Hermes Trismegistos in Egypt some 40.000 years ago, the one by the first Zoroaster in Persia about 30.000 years ago, or that by Pythagoras just about 2700 years ago?
What do the learned know about existence, about the structure of the universe, about other kinds of matter and other worlds than the physical, about the fact of a fifth kingdom in nature?
What do these immensely learned know even about the individual’s life that continues after he has left his worn-out organism?
What they may perhaps have picked up of the pertaining knowledge is so distorted that it must be regarded as little more than gross superstition.
To the Western attitude, the idea that knowledge must be kept secret is almost revolting, in any case repulsive, and it prompts the assumption that one is dealing with the "intellectual quackery of charlatans".
The Indians, on the other hand, simply accept secrecy as a necessity. Several thousand years of experience have taught them that one must not "cast pearls", and they do not.
And this for the simple reasons that exact comprehension calls for considerable qualifications, and that all knowledge which confers power is abused by those in a position to use power for their own good.
There are many kinds of yogis in India. The highest kind is unknown except to special initiates. The yogis of whom Westerners hear are mostly members of the Ramakrishna Mission. They teach the philosophy of Sankhya and Vedanta as expounded by Ramakrishna. The highest yogis are initiates who pass on their knowledge only to a few select disciples under the strictest vows of secrecy. They regard all Westerners as barbarians and consider it a profanation of their knowledge to reveal anything of it to those ignorant, incurably skeptical, scornfully and arrogantly superior, curious people, who abuse the knowledge the moment they think they have understood it and who, moreover, place all their knowledge at the service of barbarism and at the disposal of bandits.
The Indian’s attitude to life is the exact opposite of the Westerner’s. Whereas to the Westerner the physical world is the only one that exists, to the Indian the superphysical reality is the essential one. It is the higher material worlds that constitute the material basis of physical matter and the causes of the processes of nature exist in those higher worlds.
The real yogi, who has succeeded in his experiments, has developed organs which in others are as yet undeveloped, being intended to be organized and vitalized in some future epoch, organs which make it possible to explore higher molecular kinds, a whole series of ever higher stages of aggregation far beyond the possibilities of nuclear physics to ascertain.
Of these rudiments Westerners have no conception and their mighty authorities dismiss with derision and contempt the mere idea that such things could be possible. They have, to be sure, the wonderful ability to judge things of which they know nothing.
The Indian explanation of reality is itself superior to that of the West. It is a doctrine of development, of the pre-existence of the soul, of rebirth, and of karma, that is, the law of sowing and reaping. It asserts that there are other worlds than the physical and undertakes to prove this to serious and honest inquirers who are prepared to undergo its methods of developing the rudiments of higher kinds of objective consciousness existing in man. It thereby refutes the agnostic’s and the skeptic’s denial of superphysical knowledge, of existence being ruled laws, of development, etc., thereby clearing the way for esoterics.
How, then, could Westerners have any knowledge of superphysical worlds when they do not have the ability to ascertain their existence? They ascertain facts in physical matter by applying physical sense (objective physical consciousness). In order to ascertain facts in higher worlds a corresponding kind of sense is necessary, and it is that which has been given the unfortunate name of clairvoyance.
Scientists cannot be blamed for lacking emotional or mental sense. But one is justified in demanding that they should not categorically deny the existence of things concerning which they have no logical right to express opinions.
Philosophy does not teach man to think in accordance with reality. It does teach, however, that man only makes mistakes when trying to think without the necessary facts. The philosophers have not yet grasped this. Besides, they have failed to solve the most evident of all the problems of knowledge.
The judgement of Western psychology is preferably left to the understanding reader of all the following.
Those who are satisfied with their thought systems (not least the skeptics) may very well have them. We are all to re-learn in lives to come. But there is a category of inquirers who instinctively realize that there must be something different, something more, that things cannot be just as the learned say they are. It is these seekers that the esoterician wishes to reach, not in order to persuade them, but to ask them to examine the matter logically. If it is false, then it must be possible to refute it logically. But it is not refuted by the ordinary rant of those who have never examined the matter.
At mankind’s present stage of development, the esoteric knowledge cannot be more than a working hypothesis where most people are concerned. But the further mankind develops, the more obvious its incomparable superiority will become.
System is thought’s way of orienting itself. Facts are largely useless until reason can fit them into their correct contexts (historical, logical, psychological, or causal ones). All rational thinking is based on principles and systems. Every thinking man has made his own system, whether he knows it or not. Systems afford a correct apprehension of ground and consequence of thinking, as well as of cause and effect of objective realities. The quality of the system shows the individual’s level of development, his ability of judgement, and his knowledge of facts. Most people’s systems are the belief systems of emotional thinking which no facts can upset. Thereby the individual has reached his point of maturity, the limit of his receptivity, being captive in the prison of his own thoughts.
Ignorance about existence is so great that the dogmatic systems of theology, the speculative systems of philosophy, and the primitive hypothesis systems of science have all been accepted as satisfactory explanations.
The inquirers into truth examine the original facts or basic hypotheses of the existing systems, to what extent any system does not contradict itself, its consequences, and its ability to explain rationally.
Many people find esoterics self-evident the moment they first come into contact with it. This is because knowledge, as Platon maintained, is remembrance anew. Everything which we are able immediately to grasp, comprehend, understand, we have assimilated in previous incarnations. Also qualities and abilities once acquired remain latently, until they are given opportunities to develop in some new incarnation. Understanding of the old remains as well as the turn for skills. One of many examples of this is the genius, an otherwise incomprehensible phenomenon.
The esoterician presents his system to those who have remained seekers, not being satisfied with the ruling systems. He quietly awaits the day when science will have ascertained so many formerly esoteric facts that it will no longer be possible for it to refuse to accept esoterics as the only really tenable working hypothesis.
One inestimable value, among others, of the esoteric knowledge is that it frees from the superstitions and spurious knowledge of ignorance, from illusions and fictions (conceptions without correspondences in reality). Another is that it entails a complete revaluation of all the values of life as a necessary consequence of knowing the meaning and goal of life.
The Esoteric Knowledge Orders
If man is not to be like a reed in the wind, like a ship on the boundless sea, or feel as though he were walking on a bottomless quagmire, he will need at the emotional stage something firm for his feeling, and at the mental stage something firm for his thinking. Up to now, this "something" has not been in accordance with reality.
As mankind cannot unaided acquire knowledge of existence, of its meaning and goal, or knowledge of cosmic reality and life, it has always had this knowledge given to it - by whom will be shown later.
This has entailed definite risks. The knowledge that gives power, the knowledge of laws and forces of nature and how to make use of them, has always been abused for selfish ends. And those who have not been able to comprehend the knowledge of reality have always distorted it into superstition and false doctrines.
Along with knowledge goes responsibility for the right use of knowledge. Abuse of knowledge leads to the loss of knowledge and where whole nations are concerned, to their annihilation.
On two occasions whole continents have had to be submerged into the depths of the sea: Lemuria and Atlantis.
After those two failures it was decided that the knowledge should be imparted in secret schools of knowledge only, and only to those who had reached such a stage of development that they could understand correctly and not misinterpret what they were taught, but apply it correctly in the service of life. They were taught to think correctly. For the last 45.000 years esoteric knowledge orders have been instituted among nations that have reached a sufficiently high level. Since knowledge is remembrance anew, those who have never been initiated cannot see the correctness of esoterics.
The knowledge orders comprised several degrees. Those in the lowest degree were given carefully elaborated symbols which could be interpreted in a new way in each higher degree, so that only those who reached the highest degree were fully able to understand the whole of it. The procedure involved difficulties in that those who did not reach the highest degree sometimes made their own faulty thought systems.
For those not admitted to these orders, religions were instituted corresponding to different nations’ ability to understand and their need of norms of purposeful activity.
The rapid rise in general enlightenment and the advances of science made other measures necessary. Ever since the 18th century the conflict between "belief and knowledge" (between which those are unable to distinguish who believe they know, comprehend, understand), has grown more and more accentuated. (All are believers who lack the exact knowledge of reality, also those who say they do not believe in anything.) This conflict began with the anti-religious, anti-metaphysical philosophy of enlightenment and grew throughout the 19th century with the progress of scientific research. Laplace with his Système du monde, Lamarck, Darwin, Spencer, and Haeckel with the theory of evolution. Lange his History of Materialism, and others, convinced natural scientists that "they did not need the hypothesis of a spiritual world". Their attacks on the old life-views led to a growing uncivilizing disorientation, so that people finally "felt increasingly uncertain about right and wrong. They are even uncertain whether right and wrong is anything but old superstition." There is a danger that mankind in its madness will exterminate itself.
It became necessary to take steps to counter this frenzy, and it was decided to allow the safe part of the esoteric knowledge, which mankind now has the ability to comprehend, if not to understand its significance, to be made exoteric. Mankind thus had the possibility of forming a rational conception of reality and life, as well as of the meaning and goal of existence.
Belief was not permitted in the esoteric orders. In these, the question was always that of comprehending and understanding, not believing. In the lowest degree they were taught to distinguish between belief and assumption. Belief is absolute, unreasonable emotional conviction, unamenable to correction or reason. Everybody has his petty beliefs about almost any absurdity, and this is because man is unable to truly know anything but definitively established facts in the visible world. In contrast, assumption is preliminary, valid only until one has come to know, is amenable to rational arguments, and desires correction. Authorities there may well be in all domains of life, but their assumptions do not amount to any final instance for common sense, which, however different for each of us, is still the highest sense and that which everybody ought to strive to develop. It is the individual’s synthetic instinct of life acquired through his incarnations.
During the last two thousand years there has been an unremitting conflict between different idiologies, a conflict between theology and philosophy, theology and science, philosophy and science.
In the history of European philosophy it is chiefly the conflict between theology and philosophy that is apparent. In this conflict, theology has almost always had the support of those in political power. Philosophy has had to fight its way step by step, with unspeakable toil and millions of martyrs, to achieve freedom of thought and expression, tolerance and humanity. These gains are instead threatened by the Marxist idiology, which forbids the individual to think in any other way than what those in power decree. This is the new tyranny of thought. That mental development is hampered by this new kind of idiotization even the simplest intellect should be able to see.
The conflict between theology and science began with Galilei and is still going on.
The conflict between philosophy and science has been called off, at least for the time being, now that the philosophers finally have become either agnostics who deny the possibility of ascertaining superphysical facts, or antimetaphysicians who deny the existence of superphysical reality.
Throughout the history of philosophy, which actually begins with the sophists, we can trace the attempts of human reason to solve the problems of existence on its own without esoteric knowledge, with access to physical sense only.
That this was bound to fail will become manifest in what follows. But it is only now that people in general are beginning to see that it is impossible. Science lacks the organs of apprehension necessary to this, and the scientist refuses to concern himself with things that cannot be investigated by the instruments of natural research. Logically, this is perfectly defensible.
It should be pointed out that the Indian yoga philosophy is not consistent with the facts of esoteric knowledge, but is based on misinterpretations of some of these. Rebirth has been turned into a meaningless metempsychosis, so that it is considered possible for men to be reborn as animals, whereas reversion to an inferior natural kingdom in fact precluded. Evolution through the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms is considered to end with men’s entrance into and extinction in nirvana, whereas nirvana is not really the end but the beginning. The Indian interpretation of manas, buddhi, nirvana, atma, karma, is misleading, as is also the absolute subjectivism of Advaita, which makes knowledge of the matter and motion aspects of existence impossible.
The Proofs of Hylozoics
When people get hold of a new word, sooner or later it loses its original significance. People always believe they know which concept the word belongs to. It can be predicted that the term "esoteric" as an ingredient of the vocabulary of the masses will be synonymous with practically anything.
Regrettably, there is also a risk of esoterics falling into disrepute because of the growing popularity of quasi-occultism. More and more writers of the incompetent sort, with an eye to the main chance, have hastened to produce all sorts of balderdash, for there is a rapid sale for this as for all other cheap literature. Their sense of reality being ruined by all fictionalism, people prefer fiction to reality.
There are also clairvoyants à la Swedenborg who will tell what they have seen in the "inner world". They ought to consider the esoteric axiom that "no self-tutored seer ever saw correctly", since though the next world may be seemingly like ours, it is actually totally unlike. Unless one has esoteric knowledge of the pertaining matters, one will misinterpret practically everything.
There are five proofs, for those who need them, of the correctness of hylozoics (its agreement with reality), each one of them by itself wholly sufficient, being of matchless logical tenability. These five are:
the
logical proof,
the proof by explanation,
the proof by prediction,
the proof by clairvoyance,
the experimental proof.
The proof by explanation: Hylozoics provides the simplest, most unitary, most general, non-contradictory and irrefutable explanation of thousands of facts otherwise completely inexplicable.
The proof by prediction: Already a number of verifiable predictions (sufficient in number to fill a volume) of discoveries, inventions, and happenings, in themselves unpredictable by man, have been made.
The proof by clairvoyance: As also Indian raja yogis maintain, anyone who is willing to undergo the requisite training can develop abilities, now dormant in man, which will one day be powers possessed by everybody, that is, the possibility of acquiring objective consciousness in ever higher molecular kinds, or states of aggregation, at present invisible.
The experimental proof (magic): This proof consists in knowing the pertaining laws of nature and the method of their application and in using physical etheric material energies to bring about changes also in dense physical matter. Magic, however, has been prohibited for a number of reasons. Its use would put a weapon in the hands of mankind’s potential bandits and tempt them into all sorts of crime. Scientists have dubbed the magicians frauds and called all such phenomena impossible, since they "conflict with the laws of nature". The magicians have been martyrs in other ways too. Those hungry for sensations demand more and more of them. Those in need of help besiege their victims with their pleas. The curious want all their problems solved for them.
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