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[9/17/2011 5:55:04 PM] Van Atman: SECTION VIII

The Book of Enoch The Origin and the Foundation of Christianity

(Page 82) WHILE making a good deal of the Mercavah, the Jews, or rather their synagogues, rejected the
Book of Enoch, either because it was not included from the first in the Hebrew Canon, or else, as
Tertullian thought, it was disavowed

by the Jews like all other Scripture which speaks of Christ [Book of Enoch, Archbishop
Laurence’s translation. Introduction, p.v.]


But neither of these reasons was the real one. The Synedrion would have nothing to do with it, simply
because it was more of a magic than a purely kabalistic work. The present day Theologians of both Latin
and Protestant Churches class it among apocryphal productions. Nevertheless the New Testament,
especially in the Acts and Epistles, teems with ideas and doctrines, now accepted and established as
dogmas by the infallible Roman and other Churches, and even with the whole sentences taken bodily
from Enoch, or the “pseudo-Enoch,” who wrote under that name in Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic, as
asserted by Bishop Laurence, the translator of the Ethiopian text.

The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author of The Evolution of Christianity, who edited
Bishop Laurence’s translation, was compelled to make some suggestive remarks in his
Introduction. On internal evidence [ The Book of Enoch was unknown to Europe for a
thousand years, when Bruce found in Abyssinia some copies of it in Ethiopic; it was translated
by Archbishop Laurence in 1821, from the text in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.] this book is
found to have been written before the Christian period (whether two or twenty centuries does
not matter). As correctly argued by the Editor, it is

either the inspired forecast of a great Hebrew prophet, predicting with miraculous accuracy the
future teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, or the Semitic romance from which the latter borrowed
His conceptions of the triumphant return of the Son of man, to occupy a judicial throne in the
midst of rejoicing saints and trembling sinners, expectant of everlasting happiness or eternal
fire; and whether these celestial visions be accepted as human or Divine, they have exercised
so vast an influence on the destinies of mankind for nearly two thousand years that candid and
impartial seekers after religious truth can no longer delay enquiry into the relationship of the
Book of Enoch with the revelation, or the evolution, of Christianity. [Op. cit., p.xx.]

The Book of Enoch and Christianity -

(Page 83) The Book of Enoch

also records the supernatural control of the elements, through the action of individual angels
presiding over the winds, the sea, hail, frost, dew, the lightening’s flash and reverberating
thunder. The names of the principal fallen angels are also given, among whom we recognise
some of the invisible powers named in the incantations [magical] inscribed on the terracotta
cups of Hebrew-Chaldee conjurations. [ Loc. cit.]

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We also find on these cups the word “Halleluiah,” showing that

a word with which ancient Syro-Chaldeans conjured has become, through the vicissitudes of
language, the Shibboleth of modern Revivalists.[ Op. cit., p. xiv., note.]

The Editor proceeds after this to give fifty-seven verses from various parts of the Gospels and Acts, with
parallel passages from the Book of Enoch, and says:

The attention of theologians has been concentrated on the passage in the Epistle of Jude,
because the author specifically names the prophet; but the cumulative coincidence of
language and ideas in Enoch and the authors of the New Testament Scripture, as disclosed in
the parallel passages which we have collated, clearly indicates that the work of the Semitic
Milton was the inexhaustible source from which Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who
wrote in their names, borrowed their conceptions of the resurrection, judgement, immortality,
perdition, and of the universal reign of righteousness, under the eternal dominion of the Son of
man. This evangelical plagiarism culminates in the Revelation of John, which adapts the
visions of Enoch to Christianity, with modifications in which we miss the sublime simplicity of
the great master of apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of the antediluvian
patriarch. [Op. cit., p.xxxv.]

In fairness to truth, the hypothesis ought at least to have been suggested, that the Book of Enoch in its
present form is simply a transcript - with numerous pre-Christian and post-Christian additions and
interpolations - from far older texts. Modern research went so far as to point out that Enoch is made, in
Chapter Ixxi, to divide the day and night into eighteen parts, and to represent the longest day in the year
as consisting of twelve out of these eighteen parts, while a day of sixteen (Page 84) hours in length could
not have occurred in Palestine. The translator, Archbishop Laurence, remarks thus:

The region in which the author lived must have been situated not lower than forty-one degrees
north latitude, where the longest day is fifteen hours and a half, nor higher perhaps than forty-
nine degrees, where the longest day is precisely sixteen hours. This will bring the country
where he wrote as high up at least as the northern districts of the Caspian and Euxine Seas . .
. the author of the Book of Enoch was perhaps a member of one of the tribes which
Shalmaneser carried away, and placed “in Halah and in Habor by the river Goshen, and in the
cities of the Medes.” [ Op. cit., p.xiii.]

Further on, it is confessed that:

It cannot be said that internal evidence attests the superiority of the Old Testament to the
Book of Enoch . ..The Book of Enoch teaches the pre-existence of the Son of man, the Elect
One, the Messiah, who “from the beginning existed in secret, [ The Seventh Principle, the First
Emanation.] and whose name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of Spirits, before the
sun and the signs were created.” The author also refers to the “other Power who was upon
Earth over the water on that day” - an apparent reference to the language of Genesis i. 2.[ Op
cit., p.xxxvii, and xI.] [We maintain that it applies as well to the Hindu Nârâyana - the “mover
on the waters.”] We have thus the Lord of Spirits, the Elect One, and a third Power, seemingly

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foreshadowing the Trinity [as much as the Trimûrti] of futurity; but although Enoch’s ideal
Messiah doubtless exercised an important influence on primitive conceptions of the Divinity of
the Son of man, we fail to identify his obscure reference to another “Power” with the
Trinitarianism of the Alexandrine school; more especially as “angels of power” abound in the
visions of Enoch. [ Op cit., pp,x1, and 1i.]

An Occultist would hardly fail to identify the said “Power.” The Editor concludes his remarkable reflections
by adding:

Thus far we learn that the Book of Enoch was published before the Christian Era by some
great Unknown of Semitic [?] race, who, believing himself to be inspired in a post-prophetic
age, borrowed the name of an antediluvian patriarch [ Who stands for the “Solar” or
Manvantaric Year.] to authenticate his own enthusiastic forecast of the Messianic kingdom.
And as the contents of his marvellous book enter freely into the composition of the New
Testament, it follows that if the author was not an inspired prophet, who predicted the
teachings of Christianity, he was a visionary enthusiast whose illusions were accepted by
Evangelists and Apostles as revelation - alternative conclusions which involve the Divine or
human origin of Christianity. [ Op Cit., pp.xli, xlii.]

Enoch Records The Races - (Page 85) The outcome of all of which is, in the words of the same Editor:

The discovery that the language and ideas of alleged revelation are found in a pre-existent
work, accepted by Evangelists and Apostles as inspired, but classed by modern theologians
among apocryphal productions. [ Op. cit., p.xlviii.]

The accounts also for the unwillingness of the reverend librarians of the Bodleian Library to publish the
Ethopian text of the Book of Enoch.

The prophecies of the Book of Enoch are indeed prophetic, but they were intended for, and cover the
records of, the five Races out of the seven - everything relating to the last two being kept secret. Thus
the remark made by the Editor of the English translation, that:

Chapter xcii. records a series of prophecies extending from Enoch’s own time to about one
thousand years beyond the present generation, [ Op. cit., p.xxiii.]

is faulty. The prophecies extend to the end of our present Race, not merely to a “thousand years” hence.
Very true that:

In the system of [Christian] chronology adopted, a day stands [occasionally] for a hundred,
and a week for seven hundred years. [Loc. cit.]

But this is an arbitrary and fanciful system adopted by Christians to make Biblical chronology fit with facts
or theories, and does not represent the original thought. The “days” stand for the undetermined periods
of the Side-Races, and the “weeks” for the Sub-Races, the Root-Races being referred to by an
expression that is not even found in the English translation. Moreover the sentence at the bottom of page

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150:
Subsequently, in the fourth week . . . the visions of the holy and the righteous shall be seen,

the order of generation after generation shall take place, [ xcii.9.]

is quite wrong. It stands in the original: “the order of generation after generation has taken place on the
earth,” etc.; that is, after the first human race procreated in the truly human way had sprung up in the
Third Root-Races: a change which entirely alters the meaning. Then all that is given in the translation as
very likely also in the Ethiopic text, since the copies have been sorely tampered with - as about things
which were to happen in the future, is, we are informed, in the past tense of the original Chaldean MSS.,
and is not prophecy, but a narrative of what had already come to pass. When Enoch begins - “to speak
from a book” [ Op. cit., xcii.4.] he is reading the account (Page 86) given by a great Seer, and the
prophecies are not his own, but are from the Seer. Enoch or Enoichion means “internal eye” or Seer.
Thus every Prophet and Adept may be called “Enoichion,” without becoming a pseudo-Enoch. But here,
the Seer who compiled the present Book of Enoch is distinctly shown as reading out from a book:

I have been born the seventh in the first week [the seventh branch, or Side-Race, of the first

Sub-Race, after physical generation had begun, namely, in the third Root-Race] . . . But after

me, in the second week [second Sub-Race] great wickedness shall arise [arose, rather] and in

that week the end of the first shall take place, in which mankind shall be safe. But when the

first is completed iniquity shall grow up. [Op.cit.,xcii, 4-7 ]

As translated it has no sense. As it stands in the Esoteric text, it simply means, that the First Root-Race
shall come to an end during the second Sub-Race of the Third Root-Race, in the period of which time
mankind will be safe; all this having no reference whatever to the biblical Deluge. Verse 10th speaks of
the sixth week [sixth Sub-Race of the Third Root Race] when

All those who are in it shall be darkened, the hearts of all of them shall be forgetful of wisdom [

the divine knowledge will be dying out] and in it shall a man ascend.

This “man” is taken by the interpreters, for some mysterious reasons of their own, to mean
Nebuchadnezzar; he is in reality the first Hierophant of the purely human Race (after the allegorical fall
into generation) selected to perpetuate the dying, Wisdom of the Devas (Angels or Elohim). He is the first
“Son of Man” - the mysterious appellation given to the divine Initiates of the first human school of the
Manushi (men), at the very close of the Third Root-Race. He is also called the “Saviour,” as it was He,
with the other Hierophants, who saved the Elect and the Perfect from the geological conflagration,
leaving to perish in the cataclysm of the Close [ At the close of every Root-Race there comes a
cataclysm, in turn by fire, or water. Immediately after the “Fall into generation” the dross of the third Root-
Race - those who fell into sensuality by falling off from the teaching of the Divine Instructors - were
destroyed, after which the Fourth Root-Race originated, at the end of which took place the last Deluge.
(See the “Sons of God” mentioned in Isis Unveiled. 593 et seq.) ] those who forgot the primeval wisdom
in sexual sensuality.

And during its completion [of the “sixth week,” or the sixth Sub-Race ] he shall burn the house

of dominion [the half of the globe or the then inhabited continent] with fire, and all the race of

the elect root shall be dispersed. [ Op. cit., xcii,xx.]

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The Book of Enoch Symbolical -(Page 87) The above applies to the Elect Initiates, and not at all to the
Jews, the supposed chosen people, or to the Babylonian captivity, as interpreted by the Christian
theologians. Considering that we find Enoch, or his perpetuator, mentioning the execution of the “degree
upon sinners” in several different weeks, [ Op.cit., xcii, 7, 11, 13, 15.] saying that “every work of the
ungodly shall disappear from the whole earth” during this fourth time (the Fourth Race), it surely can
hardly apply to the one solitary Deluge of the Bible, still less to the Captivity.

It follows, therefore, that as the Book of Enoch covers the five Races of the Manvantara, with a few
allusions to the last two, it does not contain “Biblical prophecies,” but simply facts taken out of the Secret
Books of the East. The Editor, moreover, confesses that:

The preceding six verses, viz., 13th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th, are taken from between the 14th
and 15th verses of the nineteenth chapter, where they are to be found in the MSS. [ Op. cit.,
note, p.152 ]

By this arbitrary transposition, he has made confusion still more confused. Yet he is quite right in saying
that the doctrines of the Gospels, and even of the Old Testament, have been taken bodily from the Book
of Enoch, for this is as evident as the sun in heaven. The whole of the Pentateuch was adapted to fit in
with the facts given, and this accounts for the Hebrews refusing to give the book place in their Canon,
just as the Christians have subsequently refused to admit it among their canonical works. The fact that
the Apostle Jude and many of the Christian Fathers referred to it as a revelation and a sacred volume, is,
however, an excellent proof that the early Christians accepted it; among these the most learned - as, for
instance, Clement of Alexandria - understood Christianity and its doctrines in quite a different light from
their modern successors, and viewed Christ under an aspect that Occultists only can appreciate. The
early Nazarenes and Chrestians, as Justin Martyr calls them, were the followers of Jesus, of the true
Chrestos and Christos of Initiation; whereas, the modern Christians, especially those of the West, may be
Papists, Greeks, Calvinists, or Lutherans, but can hardly be called Christians, i.e., the followers of Jesus,
the Christ.

Thus the Book of Enoch is entirely symbolical. It relates to the history of the human Races and of their
early relation to Theogony, the symbols being interblended with astronomical and cosmic mysteries.

(Page 88) One chapter is missing, however, in the Noachian records (from both the Paris and
the Bodleian MSS.), namely, Chapter 1viii, in Sect X; this could not be remodelled, and
therefore it had to disappear, disfigured fragments alone having been left out of it. The dream
about the cows, the black, red and white heifers, relates to the first Races, their division and
disappearance. Chapter 1xxxviii, in which one of the four Angels “went to the white cows and
taught them a mystery,” after which, the mystery being born “became a man,” refers to (a) the
first group evolved of primitive Aryans, (b) to the “mystery of the Hermaphrodite” so called,
having reference to the birth of the first human Races as they are now. The well-known rite in
India, one that has survived in that patriarchal country to this day, known as the passage, or
rebirth through the cow - a ceremony to which those of lower castes who are desirous of
becoming Brahmans have to submit - has originated in this mystery. Let any Eastern Occultist
read with careful attention the above-named chapter in the Book of Enoch, and he will find that
the “Lord of the Sheep,” in whom Christians and European Mystics see Christ, is the
Hierophant Victim whose name in Sanskrit we dare not give. Again, that while the Western

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Churchmen see Egyptians and Israelites in the “sheep and wolves,” all these animals relate in
truth to the trials of the Neophyte and the mysteries of initiation, whether in India or Egypt, and
to that most terrible penalty incurred by the “wolves” - those who reveal indiscriminately that
which is only for the knowledge of the Elect and the “Perfect.”

The Christians who, thanks to later interpolations, [Those interpolations and alternations are
found in almost every case where figures are given - especially whenever the numbers eleven
and twelve come in - as these are all made (by the Christians) to relate to the numbers of
Apostles, and Tribes, and Patriarchs. The translator of the Ethiopic text - Archbishop Laurence

-attributes them generally to “mistakes of the transcriber” whenever the two texts, the Paris
and the Bodleian MSS., differ. We fear it is no mistake, in most cases.] have made out in that
chapter a triple prophecy relating to the Deluge, Moses and Jesus, are mistaken, as in reality it
bears directly on the punishment and loss of Atlantis and the penalty of indiscretion. (The
“Lord of the sheep” is Karma and the “Head of the Hierophants” also, the Supreme Initiator on
earth.) He says to Enoch who implores him to save the leaders of the sheep from being
devoured by the beasts of prey:
I will cause a recital to be made before me . . . how many they have delivered up to
destruction, and . . . what they will do; whether they will act as I have commanded them or not.

Occultists Do Not Reject the Bible -

(Page 89) Of this, however, they shall be ignorant; neither shalt thou make any explanation to
them, neither shalt thou reprove them; but there shall be an account of all the destruction done
by them in their respective seasons. [Op. cit., 1xxxviii. 99, 100.]

. . . He looked in silence, rejoicing they were devoured, swallowed up, and carried off, and
leaving them in the power of every beast for food. . [ Loc.cit.,94. This passage, as will be
presently shown, has led to a very curious discovery.]

Those who labour under the impression that the Occultists of any nation reject the Bible, in its original
text and meaning, are wrong. As well reject the Books of Thoth, the Chaldaean Kabalah or the Book of
Dzyan itself. Occultists only reject the one-sided interpretations and the human element in the Bible,
which is an Occult, and therefore a sacred, volume as much as the others. And terrible indeed is the
punishment of all those who transgress the permitted limits of secret revelations. From Prometheus to
Jesus, and from Him to the highest Adept as to the lowest disciple, every revealer of mysteries has had
to become a Chrestos, a “man of sorrow” and a martyr. “Beware,” said one of the greatest Masters, “of
revealing the Mystery to those without” - to the profane, the Sadducee and the unbeliever. All the great
Hierophants in history are shown ending their lives by violent deaths - Buddha, [ In the profane history of
Gautama Buddha he dies at the good old age of eighty, and passes off from life to death peacefully with
all the serenity of a great saint, as Barthelemy St. Hilaire has it. Not so in the Esoteric and true
interpretation which reveals the real sense of the profane and allegorical statement that makes Gautama,
the Buddha, die very unpoetically from the effects of too much pork, prepared for him by Tsonda. How
one who preached that the killing of animals was the greatest sin, and who was a perfect vegetarian,
could die from eating pork, is a question that is never asked by our Orientalists, some of whom made [as
now do many charitable missionaries in Ceylon] great fun at the alleged occurrence. The simple truth is

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that the said rice and pork are purely allegorical. Rice stands for “forbidden fruit,” like Eve's "apple", and
means Occult knowledge with the Chinese and Tibetans; and “pork “ for Brahmanical teachings - Vishnu
having assumed in his first Avatâra the form of a boar, in order to raise the earth on the surface of the
waters of space. It is not, therefore, from “pork” that Buddha died, but for having divulged some of the
Brahmanical mysteries, after which, seeing the bad effects brought on some unworthy people by the
revelation, he preferred, instead of availing himself of Nirvana, to leave his earthly form, remaining still in
the sphere of the living, in order to help humanity to progress. Hence his constant reincarnations in the
hierarchy of the Dalai and Teshu Lamas, among other bounties. Such is the Esoteric explanation. The life
of Gautama will be more fully discussed later on.] Pythagoras, Zoroaster, most of the great Gnostics, the
founders of their respective schools; and in our own more modern epoch a number of Fire-Philosophers
of Rosicrucians and Adepts. All of these are shown - whether plainly or under the veil of allegory - as
paying the penalty for the revelations they had made. This may seem to the profane reader only
coincidence.

(Page 90) To the Occultist, the death of every “Master” is significant, and appears pregnant with meaning.
Where do we find in history that “Messenger” grand or humble, an Initiate or a Neophyte, who, when he
was made the bearer of some hitherto concealed truth or truths, was not crucified and rent to shreds by
the “dogs” of envy, malice and ignorance? Such is the terrible Occult law; and he who does not feel in
himself the heart of a lion to scorn the savage barking, and the soul of a dove to forgive the poor ignorant
fools, let him give up the Sacred Science. To succeed, the Occultist must be fearless; he has to brave
dangers, dishonour and death, to be forgiving, and to be silent on that which cannot be given. Those who
have vainly laboured in that direction must wait in these days - as the Book of Enoch teaches - “until the
evildoers be consumed” and the power of the wicked annihilated. It is not lawful for the Occultist to seek
or even to thirst for revenge: let him

Wait until sin pass away, for their [the sinners] names shall be blotted out of the holy books

[the astral records], their seed shall be destroyed and their spirits slain.[ Op. cit., cv.21.]

Esoterically, Enoch is the “Son of man,” the first; and symbolically, the first Sub-Race of the Fifth Root
Race.[ In the Bible [Genesis, iv and v] there are three distinct Enochs [Kanoch or Chanoch] - the son of
Cain, the son of Seth, and the son of Jared; but they are all identical, and two of them are mentioned for
the purpose of misleading. The years of only the last two are given, the first one being left without further
notice.] And if his name yields for purposes of numerical and astronomical glyphs the meaning of the
solar year, or 365, in conformity to the age assigned to him in Genesis, it is because, being the seventh,
he is, for Occult purposes, the personified period of the two preceding Races with their fourteen Sub-
Races. Therefore, he is shown in the Book as the great grandfather of Noah who, in his turn, is the
personification of the mankind of the Fifth, struggling with that of the Fourth Root-Race - the great period
of the revealed and profaned Mysteries, when the “sons of God” coming down on Earth took for wives
the daughters of men, and taught them the secrets of the Angels; in other words, when the “mind-born”
men of the Third Race mixed themselves with those of the Fourth, and the divine Science was gradually
brought down by men to Sorcery.

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TVT: 291
291. Hỡi ôi! Con phải như ngôi sao cố định ở tận nền Trời xanh, từ khoảng không gian sâu thẳm đó, ngọn đèn Trời ấy phải chiếu sáng cho tất cả, ngoại trừ chính con. Hăy ban ánh sáng cho tất cả, mà đừng lấy của một ai.
Chúng ta không nên cho là ngôi sao chiếu sáng một cách miễn cưỡng. Nó chiếu sáng v́ nó không thể làm khác hơn. “Tất cả tạo vật đều sống theo bản tính của chúng. Bạo động đối với chúng có lợi ǵ?” (Bhagavad Gita, III, 33). Sự áp đảo bao giờ cũng đáng buồn. Người yêu Nhân Loại lúc nào cũng muốn ban ánh sáng cho họ và khi không làm được như thế th́ lại cảm thấy rất buồn.

Những thực thể mang tiềm lực dưới h́nh thức những hạt gạo, những lá liễu của Mặt Trời đă cho chúng ta thấy một gương mẫu lớn lao. Nhờ sự trung gian của chúng, sức nóng, sinh lực mới có thể tuôn tràn xuống khắp cả Thái Dương Hệ. Ở đây luôn luôn người ta thấy rằng đó là phần hy sinh của chúng; nhưng vai tṛ của chúng vẫn tự nhiên như thế; đó chính là cách biểu lộ bản chất bên trong của chúng. Thay v́ sống một cuộc đời rực rỡ trên các Cơi cao mà chúng ta không hề biết đến, chúng lại giữ xác thân Phàm Trần và sống như thế v́ sự lợi lạc cho các thế giới quần tụ chung quanh Ngôi Mặt Trời của chúng ta. Thật ra chúng tạo nên một thành tŕ bảo vệ mà Alaya có thể theo đó chảy vào một ḷng sông mới.
[9/17/2011 5:56:28 PM] Van Atman: SECTION VI
The Dangers of Practical Magic
 

(Page 67) MAGIC is a dual power: nothing is easier than to turn it into Sorcery; an evil thought suffices for it. Therefore while theoretical Occultism is harmless, and may do good, practical Magic, or the fruits of the Tree of Life and Knowledge,[ Some Symbologists, relying on the correspondence of numbers and the symbols of certain things and personages, refer these “secrets” to the mystery of generation. But it is more than this. The glyph of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” has no doubt a phallic and sexual element in it, as has the “Woman and the Serpent”; but it has also a psychical and spiritual significance. Symbols are meant to yield more than one meaning.] or otherwise the “Science of Good and Evil,” is fraught with dangers and perils. For the study of theoretical Occultism there are, no doubt a number of works that may be read with profit, besides such books as the Finer Forces of Nature, etc., the Zohar, Sepher Jetzirah, The Book of Enoch, Franck’s Kabalah, and many Hermetic treatises. These are scarce in European languages, but works in Latin by the mediaeval Philosophers, generally known as Alchemists and Rosicrucians, are plentiful. But even the perusal of these may prove dangerous for the unguided student. If approached without the right key to them, and if the student is unfit, owing to mental incapacity, for Magic, and is thus unable to discern the Right from the Left Path, let him take our advice and leave this study alone; he will only bring on himself and on his family unexpected woes and sorrows, never suspecting whence they come, nor what are the powers awakened by his mind being bent on them. Works for advanced students are many, but these can be placed at the disposal of only sworn or “pledged” chelas (disciples), those who have pronounced the ever-binding oath, and who are, therefore, helped and protected. For all other purposes, wellintentioned as such works may (Page 68) be, they can only mislead the unwary and guide them imperceptibly to Black Magic or Sorcery - if to nothing worse.

The mystic characters, alphabets and numerals found in the divisions and subdivisions of the Great Kabalah, are perhaps, the most dangerous portions in it, and especially the numerals. We say dangerous, because they are the most prompt to produce effects and results, and this with or without the experimenter’s will, even without his knowledge. Some students are apt to doubt this statement, simply because after manipulating these numerals they have failed to notice any dire physical manifestation or result. Such results would be found the least dangerous: it is the moral causes produced and the various events developed and brought to an unforeseen crisis, that would testify to the truth of what is now stated had the lay students only the power of discernment.

The point of departure of that special branch of the Occult teaching known as the “Science of Correspondences,” numerical or literal or alphabetical, has for its epigraph with the Jewish and Christian Kabalists, the two mis-interpreted verses which say that God ordered all things in number, measure and weight; [ Wisdom, xi.21. Douay version ]

and:

He created her in the Holy Ghost, and saw her, and numbered her, and measured her. [ Ecclesiasticus, i. 9. Douay version.] But the Eastern Occultists have another epigraph: “Absolute Unity, x, within number and plurality.” Both the Western and the Eastern students of the Hidden Wisdom hold to this axiomatic truth. Only the latter are perhaps more sincere in their confessions. Instead of putting a mask on their Science, they show her face openly, even if they do veil carefully her heart and soul before the inappreciative public and the profane, who are ever ready to abuse the most sacred truths for their own selfish ends. But Unity is the real basis of the Occult Sciences - physical and metaphysical. This is shown even by Eliphas Levi, the learned Western Kabalist, inclined as he is to be rather jesuitical.

He says:

Absolute Unity is the supreme and final reason of things. Therefore, that reason can be neither one person, nor three persons; it is Reason, and preeminently Reason (raison par excellence).[ Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, i, 361.]

Names are Symbols - (Page 69) The meaning of this Unity in Plurality in “God” or Nature, can be solved only by the means of transcendental methods, by numerals, as by the correspondences between soul and the Soul. Names, in the Kabalah, as in the Bible such as Jehovah, Adam Kadmon, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, are all of them more intimately connected, by geometrical and astronomical relations, with Physiology (or Phallicism) than with Theology or Religion. Little as people are as yet prepared to admit it, this will be shown to be a fact. If all those names are symbols for things hidden, as well as for those manifested, in the Bible as in the Vedas, their respective mysteries differ greatly. Plato’s motto “God geometrises” was accepted by both Aryans and Jews; but while the former applied their Science of Correspondences to veil the most spiritual and sublime truths of Nature, the latter used their acumen to conceal only one - to them the most divine - of the mysteries of Evolution, namely, that of birth and generation, and then they deified the organs of the latter.

Apart from this, every cosmogony, from the earliest to the latest, is based upon interlinked with, and most closely related to numerals and geometric figures. Questioned by an Initiate, these figures and numbers will yield numerical values based on the integral values of the Circle - “the secret habitat of the ever-invisible Deity” as the Alchemists have it - as they will yield every other Occult particular connected with such mysteries, whether anthropographical, anthroplogical, cosmic, or psychical. “In reuniting Ideas to Numbers, we can operate upon Ideas in the same way as upon Numbers, and arrive at the Mathematics of Truth,” writes an Occultist, who shows his great wisdom in desiring to remain unknown.

Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical principles. “True mathematics,” says the Magicon, “is something with which all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much praised infallibility only arises from this - that materials, conditions and references are made to foundation.”

The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned in India, and from the Egyptian Hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically. The sacred numbers of the universe in their esoteric combination can alone solve the great problem, and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the emanations. The lower orders, before they develop into higher ones, must emanate from the (Page 70) higher spiritual ones, and when arrived at the turning-point, be reabsorbed into the infinite.[ Isis Unveiled, i, 6, 7.]

It is upon these true Mathematics that the knowledge of the Kosmos and of all mysteries rests, and to one acquainted with them, it is the easiest thing possible to prove that both Vaidic and Biblical structures are based upon “God-in-Nature” and “Nature-in-God,” as the radical law. Therefore, this law - as everything else immutable and fixed in eternity - could find a correct expression only in those purest transcendental Mathematics referred to by Plato, especially in Geometry as transcendentally applied. Revealed to men - we fear not and will not retract the expression - in this geometrical and symbolical garb, Truth has grown and developed into additional symbology, invented by man for the wants and better comprehension of the masses of mankind that came too late in their cyclic development and evolution to have shared in the primitive knowledge, and would never have grasped it otherwise. If later on, the clergy - crafty and ambitious of power in every age - anthropomorphised and degraded abstract ideals, as well as the real and divine Beings who do exist in Nature, and are the Guardians and Protectors of our manvantaric world and period, the fault and guilt rests with those would-be leaders, not with the masses.

But the day has come when the gross conceptions of our forefathers during the Middle Ages can no longer satisfy the thoughtful religionist. The mediaeval Alchemist and Mystic are now transformed into the sceptical Chemist and Physicist; and most of them are found to have turned away from truth, on account of the purely anthropomorphic ideas, the gross Materialism, of the forms in which it is presented to them. Therefore, future generations have either to be gradually initiated into the truths underlying Exoteric Religions, including their own or to be left to break the feet of clay of the last of the gilded idols. No educated man or woman would turn away from any of the now called “superstitions,” which they believe to be based on nursery tales and ignorance, if they could only see the basis of fact that underlies every “superstition.” But let them once learn for a certainty that there is hardly a claim in the Occult Sciences that is not founded on philosophical and scientific facts in Nature, and they will pursue the study of those Sciences with the same, if not with greater, ardour than that they have expended in shunning them. This cannot be achieved at once, for to benefit mankind such truths have to be revealed gradually and with great caution, the public mind not being prepared for them.

The Three Mothers - (Page 71) However much the Agnostics of our age may find themselves in the mental attitude demanded by Modern Science, people are always apt to cling to their old hobbies so long as the remembrance of them lasts. They are like the Emperor Julian - called the Apostate, because he loved truth too well to accept aught else - who, though in his last Theophany he beheld his beloved Gods as pale, worn-out, and hardly discernible shadows, nevertheless clung to them. Let, then, the world cling to its Gods, to whatever plane or realm they may belong. The true Occultist would be guilty of high treason to mankind, were he to break forever the old deities before he could replace them with the whole and unadulterated truth - and this he cannot do as yet. Nevertheless, the reader may be allowed to learn at least the alphabet of that truth. He may be shown, at any rate, what the Gods and Goddesses of the Pagans, denounced as demons by the Church, are not, if he cannot learn the whole and final truth as to what they are. Let him assure himself that the Hermetic “Tres Matres,” and the “Three Mothers” of the Sepher Jetzirah are one and the same thing; that they are no Demon-Goddesses, but Light, Heat, and Electricity, and then, perchance, the learned classes will spurn them no longer. After this, the Rosicrucian Illuminati may find followers even in the Royal Academies, which will be more prepared, perhaps, than they are now, to admit the grand truths of archaic Natural Philosophy, especially when their learned members shall have assured themselves that, in the dialect of Hermes, the “Three Mothers” stand as symbols for the whole of the forces or agencies which have a place assigned to them in the modern system of the “correlation of forces.” [ “Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in the temple of Memphis, on one of which was engraved the following sentence: ‘One nature delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one nature overrules another, and the whole of them are one’.” “The inherent restlessness of matter is embodied in the saying of Hermes: ‘Action is he life of Phta’: and Orpheus calls nature χολυμηχανος ματηρ , ‘the mother that makes many things,’ or the ingenious, the contiving, the inventive mother.” - Isis Unveiled. i. 257.] Even the polytheism of the “superstitious” Brâhman and idolater shows its raison d’être, since the three Shaktis of the three great Gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, are identical with the “Three Mothers” of the monotheistic Jew.

The whole of the ancient religious and mystical literature is symbolical. The Books of Hermes, the Zohar, the Ya-Yakav, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, (Page 72) the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bible, are as full of symbolism as are the Nabathean revelations of the Chaldaic Qu-tâmy; it is a loss of time to ask which is the earliest; all are simply different versions of the one primeval Record of prehistoric knowledge and revelation.

The first four chapters of Genesis contain the synopsis of all the rest of the Pentateuch, being only the various versions of the same thing in different allegorical and symbolical applications. Having discovered that the Pyramid of Cheops with all its measurements is to be found contained in its minutest details in the structure of Solomon’s Temple; and having ascertained that the biblical names Shem, Ham and Japhet are determinative of pyramid measures, in connection with the 600-year period of Noah and the 500-year period of Shem, Ham and Japhet: . . . the term “Sons of Elohim” and “Daughters” of H-Adam, [are] for one thing astronomical terms,[ Source of Measures. p.x.]

the author of the very curious work already mentioned - a book very little known in Europe, we regret to say - seems to see nothing in his discovery beyond the presence of Mathematics and Metrology in the Bible. He also arrives at most unexpected and extraordinary conclusions, such as are very little warranted by the facts discovered. His impression seems to be that because the Jewish biblical names are all astronomical, therefore the Scriptures of all the other nations can be “only this and nothing more.” But this is a great mistake of the erudite and wonderfully acute author of The Source of Measures, if he really thinks so. The “Key to the Hebrew- Egyptian Mystery” unlocks but a certain portion of the hieratic writings of these two nations, and leaves those of other peoples untouched. His idea is that the Kabalah “is only that sublime Science upon which Masonry is based”, in fact he regards Masonry as the substance of the Kabalah, and the latter as the “rational basis of the Hebrew text of Holy Writ.” About this we will not argue with the author. But why should all those who may have found in the Kabalah something beyond “the sublime Science” upon which Masonry is alleged to have been built, be held up to public contempt?

In its exclusiveness and one-sidedness such a conclusion is pregnant with future misconceptions and is absolutely wrong. In its uncharitable criticism it throws a slur upon the “Divine Science” itself.

The Bible and Word - Juggling - (Page 73) The Kabalah is indeed “of the essence of Masonry,” but it is dependent on Metrology only in one of its aspects, the less Esoteric, as even Plato made no secret that the Deity was ever geometrising. For the uninitiated, however learned and endowed with genius they may be, the Kabalah, which treats only of “the garment of God,” or the veil and cloak of truth, is built from the ground upward with a practical application to present uses. [ Masonic Review, July 1886 ]

Or in other words represents an exact Science only on the terrestrial plane. To the initiated, the Kabalistic Lord descends from the primeval Race, generated spiritually from the “Mind-born Seven.” Having reached the Earth the Divine Mathematics - a synonym for Magic in his day, as we are told by Josephus - veiled her face. Hence the most important secret yet yielded by her in our modern day is the identity of the old Roman measures and the present British measures of the Hebrew-Egyptian cubit and the Masonic inch. [ See Source of Measures, pp. 47 - 50, et pass.]

The discovery is most wonderful, and has led to further and minor unveilings of various riddles in reference to Symbology and biblical names. It is thoroughly understood and proven, as shown by Nachanides, that in the days of Moses the initial sentence in Genesis was made to read B’rash ithbara Elohim, or “In the head-source [ or Mûlaprakriti - the Rootless Root] developed [or evolved] the Gods [Elohim], the heavens and the earth;” whereas it is now, owing to the Massora and theological cunning, transformed into B’rashith bara Elohim, or, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” - which word juggling alone has led to materialistic anthropomorphism and dualism.] How many more similar instances may not be found in the Bible, the last and latest of the Occult works of antiquity? There is no longer any doubt in the mind of the Occultist, that, notwithstanding its form and outward meaning, the Bible - as explained by the Zohar or Midrash, the Yetsirah (Book of Creation) and the Commentary on the Ten Sephiroth (by Azariel Ben Manachem of the X11th century) - is part and parcel of the Secret Doctrine of the Aryans, which explains in the same manner the Vedas and all other allegorical books. The Zohar, in teaching that the Impersonal One Cause manifests in the Universe through Its Emanations, the Sephiroth - that Universe being in its (Page 74) totality simply the veil woven from the Deity’s own substance - is undeniably the copy and faithful echo of the earliest Vedas. Taken by itself, without the additional help of the Vaidic and of Brahmanical literature in general , the Bible will never yield the universal secrets of Occult Nature. The cubits, inches, and measures of this physical plane will never solve the problems of the world on the spiritual plane - for Spirit can neither be weighed nor measured. The working out of these problems is reserved for the “mystics and the dreamers” who alone are capable of accomplishing it.

Moses was an initiated priest, versed in all the mysteries and the Occult knowledge of the Egyptian temples - hence thoroughly acquainted with primitive Wisdom. It is in the latter that the symbolical and astronomical meaning of that “Mystery of Mysteries,” the Great Pyramid, has to be sought. And having been so familiar with the geometrical secrets that lay concealed for long aeons in her strong bosom - the measurements and proportions of the Kosmos, our little Earth included - what wonder that he should have made use of his knowledge? The Esoterism of Egypt was that of the whole world at one time. During the long ages of the Third Race it had been the heirloom, in common, of the whole of mankind, received from their Instructors, the “Sons of Light,” the primeval Seven. There was a time also when the Wisdom- Religion was not symbolical for it became Esoteric only gradually, the change being necessitated by misuse and by the Sorcery of the Atlanteans. For it was the “misuse” only, and not the use, of the divine gift that led the men of the Fourth Race to Black Magic and Sorcery, and finally to become “forgetful of Wisdom”; while those of the Fifth Race, the inheritors of the Rishis of the Treta Yuga, used their powers to atrophise such gifts in mankind in general, and then, as the “Elect Root,” dispersed. Those who escaped the “Great Flood” preserved only its memory, and a belief founded on the knowledge of their direct fathers of one remove, that such a Science existed, and was now jealously guarded by the “Elect Root” exalted by Enoch. But there must again come a time when man shall once more become what he was during the second Yuga (age), when his probationary cycle shall be over and he shall gradually become what he was - semi-corporeal and pure. Does not Plato, the Initiate, tell us in the Phaedrus all that man once was, and that which he may yet again become:

Before man’s spirit sank into sensuality and became embodied through the loss of his wings, he lived among the Gods in the airy spiritual world where everything is true and pure. [ See Cary's translation, pp.322, 323.]

Moses and the Jews - (Page 75 ) Elsewhere he speaks of the time when men did not perpetuate themselves, but lived as pure spirits. Let those men of Science who feel inclined to laugh at this, themselves unravel the mystery of the origin of the first man.

Unwilling that his chosen people - chosen by him - should remain as grossly idolatrous as the profane masses that surrounded them, Moses utilised his knowledge of cosmogonical mysteries of the Pyramid, to build upon it the Genesiacal Cosmogony in symbols and glyphs. This was more accessible to the minds of the hoi polloi than the abstruse truths taught to the educated in the sanctuaries. He invented nothing but the outward garb, added not one iota; but in this he merely followed the example of older nations and Initiates. If he clothed the grand truths revealed to him by his Hierophant under the most ingenious imagery, he did it to meet the requirements of the Israelites; that stiff-necked race would accept no God unless He were as anthropomorphic as those of the Olympus; and he himself failed to foresee the times when highly educated statesmen would be defending the husks of the fruit of wisdom that grew and developed in him on Mount Sinai, when communing with his own personal God - his divine Self. Moses understood the great danger of delivering such truths to the selfish, for he understood the fable of Prometheus and remembered the past. Hence, he veiled them from the profanation of public gaze and gave them out allegorically. And this is why his biographer says of him, that when he descended from Sinai, Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone . . . And he put a veil upon his face.[ Exodus. xxxiv. 29, 33.]

And so he “put a veil” upon the face of his Pentateuch; and to such an extent that, using orthodox chronology, only 3376 years after the event people begin to acquire a conviction that it is “a veil indeed.” It is not the face of God or even of a Johovah shining through; not even the face of Moses, but verily the faces of the later Rabbis. No wonder if Clemens wrote in the Stromateis that:

Similar, then, to the Hebrew enigmas in respect to concealment are those of the Egyptians also. [ Op, cit., V, vii.]

SECTION VII

Old Wine in New Bottles

(Page 76) IT is more than likely, that the Protestants in the days of the Reformation knew nothing of the true origin of Christianity, or, to be more explicit and correct, of Latin Ecclesiasticism. Nor is it probable that the Greek Church knew much of it, the separation between the two having occurred at a time when, in the struggle for political power the Latin Church was securing, at any cost, the alliance of the highly educated, the ambitious and influential Pagans, while these were willing to assume the outward appearance of the new worship, provided they were themselves kept in power. There is no need to remind the reader here of the details of that struggle, wellknown to every educated man. It is certain that the highly cultivated Gnostics and their leaders - such men as Saturnilus, an uncompromising ascetic, as Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, Menander and Cerinthus - were not stigmatised by the (now) Latin Church because they were heretics, nor because their tenets and practices were indeed “ob turpitudinem portentosam nimium et horribilem,” “monstrous, revolting abominations,” as Baronius says of those of Carpocrates ; but simply because they knew too much of fact and truth. Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie correctly remarks; They were stigmatised by the later Roman Church because they came into conflict with the purer Church of Christianity - the possession of which was usurped by the Bishops of Rome, but which original continues in its docility towards the founder, in the Primitive Orthodox Greek Church. [ The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia under “Gnosticism.”] Unwilling to accept the responsibility of gratuitous assumptions, the writer deems it best to prove this inference by more than one personal and defiant admission of an ardent Roman Catholic writer, evidently entrusted with the delicate task by the Vatican.

Copies That Ante-Dated Originals - (Page 77) The Marquis de Mirville makes desperate efforts to explain to the Catholic interest certain remarkable discoveries in Archaeology and Palaeography, though the Church is cleverly made to remain outside of the quarrel and defence. This is undeniably shown by his ponderous volumes addressed to the Academy of France between 1803 and 1865. Seizing the pretext of drawing the attention of the materialistic “Immortals” to the “epidemic of Spiritualism,” the invasion of Europe and America by a numberless host of Satanic forces, he directs his efforts towards proving the same, by giving the full Genealogies and the Theogony of the Christian and Pagan deities, and by drawing parallels between the two. All such wonderful likenesses and identities are only “seeming and superficial,” he assures the reader. Christian symbols, and even characters, Christ, the Virgin, Angels and Saints, tells them, were all personated centuries beforehand by the fiends of hell, in order to discredit eternal truth by their ungodly copies. By their knowledge of futurity the devils anticipated events, having discovered the secrets of the Angels.” Heathen Deities, all the Sun-Gods, named Sotors - Saviours - born of immaculate mothers and dying a violent death, were only Ferouers [ In the Ferouers and Devs of Jacobi (Letters F. and D.) the word “ferouer” is explained in the following manner: The Ferouer is a part of the creature (whether man or animal) of which it is the type and which it survives. It is the Nous of the Greeks, therefore divine and immortal, and thus can hardly be the Devil or the satanic copy De Mirville would represent it (See Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions, Vol. XXXV11, P. 623, and chap. xxxix. p. 749).

Foucher contradicts him entirely. The Ferouer was never the “principle of sensations,” but always referred to the most divine and pure portion of Man’s Ego - the spiritual principle. Anquetil says the Ferouer is the purest portion of man’s soul. The Persian Dev is the antithesis of the Ferouer, for the Dev has been transformed by Zoroaster into the Genius of Evil (whence the Christian Devil), but even the Dev is only finite: for having become possessed of the soul of man by usurpation, it will have to leave it at the great day of Retribution. The Dev obsesses the soul of the defunct for three days, during which the soul wanders about the spot at which it was forcibly separated from its body, the Ferouer ascends to the region of eternal Light. It was an unfortunate idea that made the noble Marquis de Mirville imagine the Ferouer to be a “satanic copy” of a divine original. By calling all the Gods of the Pagans - Apollo, Osiris, Brahma, Ormazd, Bel, etc., the “Ferouers of Christ and of the chief Angels,” he merely exhibits the God and the Angels he would honour as inferior to the Pagan Gods, as man is inferior to his Soul and Spirit: since the Ferouer is the immortal part of the mortal being of which it is the type and which it survives. Perchance the poor author is unconsciously prophetic: and Apollo, Brahma, Ormazd, Osiris, etc., are destined to survive and replace - as eternal cosmic verities - the evanescent fictions about the God, Christ and Angels of the Latin Church! ] - as they were called by the Zoroastrians - the demon-ante-dated copies (copies anticipées) of the Messiah to come, The danger of recognition of such facsimiles had indeed lately become dangerously great. It had lingered threateningly in the air, hanging like a sword of Damocles over the Church, since the days of Voltaire, Dupuis and other writers on similar lines. The discoveries (Page 78) of the Egyptologists, the finding of Assyrian and Babylonian pre- Mosaic relics bearing the legend of Moses [ See George Smith's Babylon and other works] and especially the many rationalistic works published in England, such as Supernatural Religion, made recognition unavoidable. Hence the appearance of Protestant and Roman Catholic writers deputed to explain the inexplicable; to reconcile the face of Divine Revelation with the mystery that the divine personages, rites, dogmas and symbols of Christianity were so often identical with those of the several great heathen religions. The former - the Protestant defenders - tried to explain it, on the ground of “prophetic, precursory ideas”; the Latinists, such as De Mirville, by inventing a double set of Angels and Gods, the one divine and true, the other - the earlier - “copies ante-dating the originals” and due to a clever plagiarism by the Evil One. The Protestant stratagem is an old one, that of the Roman Catholics is so old that it has been forgotten, and is as good as new. Dr. Lundy’s Monumental Christianity and A Miracle in Stone belong to the first attempts. De. Mirville’s Pneumatologie to the second. In India and China, every such effort on the part of the Scotch and other missionaries ends in laughter, and does no harm; the plan devised by the Jesuits is more serious. De Mirville’s volumes are thus very important, as they proceed from a source which has undeniably the greatest learning of the age at its service, and this coupled with all the craft and casuistry that the sons of Loyola can furnish. The Marquis de Mirville was evidently..


[9/17/2011 6:00:20 PM] *** Call ended, duration 09:01 ***
[9/17/2011 6:00:24 PM] *** Conference call, duration 02:45 ***
[9/17/2011 6:03:16 PM] *** Conference call ***
[9/17/2011 6:14:05 PM] Van Atman: ZOHAR
[9/17/2011 7:14:55 PM] Thuan Thi Do:
292. Hỡi ôi! Con sẽ trở nên như tuyết tinh anh trong các thung lũng của núi non, chạm đến th́ lạnh lẽo và tê buốt, nhưng lại che chở cho hột giống yên giấc trong ḷng nó một cách ấm áp. Bây giờ th́ chính tuyết đó phải nhận lănh sự đông giá cắt thịt, gió bấc lạnh thấu xương, để che chở cho đất khỏi nanh vuốt bạo tàn, đất ấy có chứa mùa màng đầy hứa hẹn, mùa màng đó sẽ nuôi kẻ đói.

Sự so sánh với tuyết ở trên thật đẹp, nhưng không nên đi quá xa. Vị Đệ Tử phải trở nên như tuyết để trong trắng, tinh khiết, không vết nhơ. Khi nói với các Đệ Tử của ḿnh, có lẽ Đức Aryasanga đă chỉ họ những đỉnh núi phủ đầy tuyết, ở khắp nơi đều trông thấy.

Nếu tuyết vô thụ cảm không phải tự nó gây ra tai hại, nhưng v́ sự giá lạnh không làm cho nó cảm xúc được. Dù thời tiết có xuống thấp đến đâu th́ tuyết vẫn như thế, v́ không bị tác động, nó có đặc tính che chở cho đất chống lại sự giá lạnh mănh liệt hơn. Người chí nguyện phải đạt mục đích tương tợ như tuyết. Y phải trở nên vô cảm, nhưng chỉ theo ư nghĩa chịu đựng một cách lănh đạm trước tất cả những sự rối loạn và những đ̣n đến từ bên ngoài để không ngừng che chở cho hạt giống đang yên giấc.

Hạt giống chính là Mầm Thiêng Liêng trong con người; nó bắt đầu thức tỉnh ở những người chú ư đến những vấn đề cao thượng và cố gắng tự phát triển. Đó cũng chính là mầm giống mà chúng ta phải yêu quư ở những kẻ khác. Kinh Upanishad nói rằng trong hạt trái dẻ rừng đă có tiềm tàng sự hiện hữu của cây sồi; nó chỉ phát triển bằng cách rút lấy ở không khí, đất và ánh sáng Mặt Trời những yếu tố làm cho nó có thể tăng trưởng. Chơn Thần cũng thế, là Điểm Linh Quang của Đức Thượng Đế trong chúng ta, nó chứa đựng tất cả những tiềm năng của Ngài, nên nhờ đó một ngày kia chúng ta cũng trở nên một Đấng Thượng Đế như Ngài vậy, tuy nhiên Chơn Thần cần phải tự phát triển.

Chúng ta cần phải cung cấp cho những Hạt Giống Thiêng Liêng đó những điều kiện giúp nó phát triển tốt đẹp nhất tại các Cơi thấp. V́ thế chúng ta phải chịu lạnh cắt da và gió bấc thấu xương để che chở cho những ai có thể bị thời tiết bất lợi ấy chi phối và làm cho tŕ trệ. Có nhiều người sẵn sàng nhận lănh Giáo Lư Thiêng Liêng, chúng ta phải cho họ thức ăn tinh thần đó. Họ đang đói, chúng ta phải mang đến cho họ những thực phẩm mà họ cần để tăng trưởng. Họ chưa biết rơ những ǵ họ cần, nhưng khi thức ăn vừa dọn ra cho họ, họ liền chiếm lấy.

Trong Hội Thông Thiên Học, kinh nghiệm đó cũng xảy ra ở vài huynh đệ của chúng ta. Khi vừa bắt gặp Giáo Lư Thông Thiên Học, chúng ta thầm nhủ: “Đây đúng là những ǵ ḿnh đă chờ đợi,” mặc dù trước khi nghe nói đến nó chúng ta không biết ḿnh cần cái ǵ. Biết bao người đang chờ đợi, cũng như chính chúng ta đă chờ đợi Giáo Lư ấy và chúng ta phải giống như tuyết, nhận lănh vai tṛ che chở trong khi sự giá lạnh c̣n tồn tại và sau đó, dưới ánh Mặt Trời, nó sẽ tan ra và biến mất.

Điều nầy đúng như chúng ta phải thực hiện đối với trẻ con trong gia đ́nh. Khi gặp thời buổi khó khăn hay có việc lo buồn, chúng ta phải giữ ǵn cho trẻ con đừng biết chi cả. Thức ăn không đầy đủ chăng, chúng ta phải lo cho trẻ con ăn trước, cha và mẹ phải chấp nhận phần c̣n lại. Một đặc ân đă ban cho chúng ta: Đó là bản năng thiêng liêng được biểu lộ khá đầy đủ ở mỗi người để chúng ta nhận thấy có bổn phận phải che chở cho tuổi thơ không được bảo vệ.

Tinh thần đó phải được áp dụng trên nhiều phương diện của đời sống. Chúng ta hơi tiến hoá hơn những người hoàn toàn vô minh. Chính những người đó mới đáng thương hại hơn cả, chứ không phải những người tin rằng họ đang chịu những sự khó khăn quan trọng về tinh thần, chẳng hạn những người lo âu rằng Tôn Giáo của họ không đáp ứng nổi nhu cầu của họ một cách trọn vẹn. T́nh cảm không cần thiết nhất đối với những người đó, v́ ít ra họ cũng đă thức tỉnh và cố gắng t́m ra ánh sáng. Không, chính phần lớn Nhân Loại c̣n vô minh, chính những người chưa biết rằng có một mục đích xứng đáng cho họ cố gắng, những người ấy mới cần đến t́nh thương hơn cả. Chúng ta không thể làm ǵ nhiều cho họ. Tất cả những ǵ mà người ta có thể làm cho một con gà ở trong cái trứng, chính là duy tŕ hơi ấm cho nó thôi. Sức nóng biểu lộ cho sự sống mà chúng ta có thể truyền cho nó. Chúng ta phải có ḷng tốt, T́nh Huynh Đệ và sự chính trực. Khi kẻ khác cần sự giáo hoá, chúng ta hăy ban bố cho họ, nhưng chúng ta luôn luôn có thể cho họ t́nh thương và những tư tưởng cao thượng, v́ nếu họ nhận được mấy điều nầy một cách đúng đắn, th́ họ sẽ cảm thấy ấm áp như con gà con ở trong trứng vậy.

Người ta nói rằng sự Thuyết Giáo là một việc làm tuyệt hảo, nhưng bài thuyết pháp cao cả hơn hết chính là một Đời Sống Tốt Đẹp. Đây là một lư do: Chính sự thuyết giáo như thế khích động những người c̣n chưa biết họ thiếu cái ǵ. Đa số người chỉ lo sinh sống và săn sóc gia đ́nh của họ, họ không hề bận tâm đến Thông Thiên Học hay Tôn Giáo. Ở Anh, xứ được xem như rất mến chuộng Tôn Giáo ở Âu Châu, những nơi thờ phượng không có đến 1/10 dân chúng đến dự. Tại các Nhà Thờ, Thánh Đường lớn nhỏ đủ loại thường cũng không đầy người được tới phân nửa, do đó chúng ta có thể nói rằng không có đến 1/20 dân chúng đến dự thường ngày một buổi lễ chánh thức. Những bài thuyết giảng hấp dẫn về Thông Thiên Học của chúng ta cũng không tạo được ấn tượng nào trên khối quần chúng đó, cũng như khi họ nghe một điệu nhạc hay đọc một bài thơ. Trái lại, bao giờ họ cũng chú ư đến những người cao thượng, tiến hoá hơn họ và xét đoán những người mà tŕnh độ học vấn và giai cấp xă hội cao hơn họ. Ai sống một cuộc đời đức hạnh chơn thật, trong sạch và vị tha sẽ luôn luôn thuyết giáo cho tất cả những người đó c̣n hơn những bài diễn văn làm cho họ thờ ơ lănh đạm.

Nhiều Nhà Truyền Giáo thật đáng trách v́ bài Thuyết Giáo của họ không đi đôi với việc làm. Một Nhà Truyền Giáo tạm trú trong một Câu Lạc Bộ, tại một thị trấn nhỏ ở Ấn Độ; chung quanh ông hầu hết là những người Ấn Độ trường trai và tŕ giới; c̣n vị Giáo Sĩ th́ đ̣i ăn thịt ḅ và thường mang theo một b́nh rượu uưt-ki hoặc rượu mạnh khác, ông cũng không đến nếm thử thịt chim hoặc thịt thú rừng với mấy người bạn Âu Châu của ông. Sau đó ông lại thuyết giảng về đức tinh khiết và ḷng bác ái của Đấng Christ; đôi khi ông c̣n dám xúc phạm đến những vật thờ phượng của dân chúng. Kết quả do ông thu hoạch được thường không có chi cả, ngoại trừ những người đạo đức giả đi theo ông để hưởng lợi về vật chất. Tại các Trường Học ông thường t́m cách phá hoại Tôn Giáo của trẻ em mà không vun trồng được Đạo Giáo của ông. Ít khi ông lôi cuốn được một người Ấn Độ lương thiện thành một người Công Giáo tốt, thành thử việc làm ấy không có ích lợi chi cả, mà thỉnh thoảng ông lại c̣n biến một người tốt thành một người Công Giáo tồi tệ. Nếu ông chịu sống một cuộc đời thánh thiện th́ sẽ đẹp đẽ hơn biết bao, nhờ đó những người Ấn Độ sẽ hiểu ông hơn, rồi ông có thể nói với họ về Đấng Christ là Sư Phụ của ông, Ngài đă gây cảm hứng cho ông và nhờ Ngài nên ông mới được như ngày nay.Trên phương diện cá nhân, đây cũng là một lối tuyên truyền tuyệt hảo, v́ người Ấn Độ có tinh thần khoan dung và thường sẵn sàng tôn kính các Đấng Thiêng Liêng được kẻ khác sùng mộ như chính các Đấng Hoá Thân Linh Thiêng của họ vậy.

Chúng ta thường nghe nói chắc chắn rằng các vùng Đông Phương bị Cơ Đốc hoá rất nhanh; đó là người ta muốn nói rằng các vùng đó theo đ̣i văn minh tân tiến – như xài đèn điện và theo nguyên tắc vệ sinh, hoặc là từ bỏ vài cổ tục xă hội, như các thiếu phụ thuộc giai cấp thượng lưu tự giam ḿnh trong chốn pḥng the và tục tảo hôn, vả lại tục lệ nầy cũng thường thấy trong giới Thiên Chúa Giáo Âu Châu cách đây một hoặc hai thế kỷ. Có lẽ người ta đă quên những người Công Giáo chính thống chống lại Khoa Học và những sự cải cách xă hội như thế nào và những sự tiến bộ nầy phải bị loại ra khỏi một thứ “Thiên Chúa Giáo” thật giống như điều mà chính các Nhà Truyền Giáo c̣n thuyết giảng hiện nay.
[9/17/2011 8:45:48 PM] Thuan Thi Do: DIỆT TRỪ SỰ HAM MUỐN

A. B. Bây giờ chúng ta đă đến đức tánh thứ hai mà tiếng Phạn gọi là vairagya và theo Đức Thầy gọi bằng Anh ngữ là Tánh Đoạn Tuyệt. Phiên dịch như thế thật rất đúng. Trước kia tôi dùng danh từ "không đắm mê", nhưng từ nay tôi sẽ đổi lại là Tánh Đoạn Tuyệt như Đức Thầy đă chọn.

Đối với nhiều người th́ tánh đoạn tuyệt là một đức tánh khó tập được, v́ họ tưởng rằng những điều ham muốn tạo ra con người họ. Và nếu những điều ham muốn riêng tư, những thiện cảm và những bất thiện cảm của họ bị diệt mất, th́ họ không c̣n cái chi cả.

A. B. Hầu hết những người thành tâm muốn đi trên con Đường Đạo đều nhận biết Chân lư của câu đầu tiên, trong đó Đức Thầy nói rằng Tánh Đoạn Tuyệt là một đức tánh được chỉ định cần thiết và khó tập được. Bởi v́ con người đồng hóa với dục vọng của ḿnh nên sự khó khăn mới do đó sinh ra. Ngày nào một dục vọng chưa được thỏa măn c̣n làm cho bạn khổ sở, th́ ngày đó bạn c̣n đồng hóa với nó. Tốt hơn là biết và nh́n nhận điều đó, bởi v́ rất dễ mà tưởng rằng bạn đă thoát ra khỏi dục vọng, nhưng thật ra bạn chưa giải trừ được chút nào. Một số đông người đời thích cho rằng họ đă chủ trị được những dục vọng của họ, tuy nhiên trọn đời họ và mỗi hành vi của họ đều chứng tỏ họ chưa thoát khỏi tay chúng nó. Điều hay hơn hết là nhận ra sự thật ấy, nếu bạn chưa làm được điều đó; rồi bạn mới sẵn sàng áp dụng phương thuốc.

Bước đầu tiên là chú trọng đến ư niệm này: "Tôi không phải là dục vọng". Đến đây bạn có thể nhờ sự giải thích của tôi về vấn đề bẩm tính. Bẩm tính này cũng thay đổi như dục vọng. Vậy cái ǵ thay đổi đều không thể là Chơn Ngă và tất cả mọi sự xao động thay đổi đều không liên hệ ǵ đến nó. Chẳng hạn, tôi biết có nhiều người, một hôm nói như vầy: "Hữu phước thay được ở bên Adyar và suy gẫm về những việc trọng đại xảy ra bên ấy". Nhưng ngày mai, họ lại thấy tinh thần suy nhược, họ ngă ḷng, rủn chí. Họ không phải là bẩm tính bất thường này, không phải là sự nhiệt thành, mà cũng không phải sự ngă ḷng thật là bạn đâu. Cả hai chỉ là sự rung động tạm thời của Cái Vía, do sự đụng chạm bên ngoài gây ra.

Do đó, người ta khuyên bạn nên tham thiền mỗi ngày, bởi v́ khi dục vọng của bạn chưa nằm yên, bạn không thể nào tham thiền cho có hiệu quả được. Nhờ tham thiền đều đặn và tận tâm dần dần bạn sẽ phân biệt được Chơn Ngă ẩn phía sau những sự ham muốn của bạn. Hăy kiên tâm tiếp tục tham thiền trọn ngày tập lấy thái độ cần thiết, th́ bạn sẽ bắt đầu phân biệt được Chơn Ngă một cách thường trực. Rồi bạn sẽ không c̣n đồng hóa bạn với dục vọng của bạn và không c̣n luôn luôn cảm thấy rằng: "Tôi có ư định, tôi ước mong, tôi muốn" mà bạn sẽ nghĩ rằng: "Không phải là Chơn Ngă của tôi đâu mà ấy là bản ngă thấp hèn của tôi đó".

Đây là bài học đầu tiên và trọng đại mà Đức Thầy dạy về các Đức tánh cần thiết thứ hai. Trước khi được Điểm Đạo [36], chúng ta không bị bắt buộc phải đoạn tuyệt hoàn toàn. Tuy nhiên, Đức Thầy mong mỏi bạn thực hiện được một phần lớn lao của sự đoạn tuyệt, và đối với chúng ta, ư muốn của Ngài là một định luật . . . . Trước khi bạn có thể được Điểm Đạo, th́ tất cả những sự dao động từ sự ngă ḷng, rủn chí qua sự bồng bột, sôi nổi, hai cực đó đều phải chấm dứt.

C. W. L. Nhiều người không cố gắng chút nào để phân biệt dục vọng với Chơn Ngă, mà họ nói rằng: "Trời sinh tôi ra thế nào th́ tôi thế ấy. Nếu tánh t́nh tôi không tốt, ư chí tôi bạc nhược, th́ cũng do Ngài tạo ra. Nếu tôi không đủ nghị lực chống chơi lại sự cám dỗ, đó là tại tôi sinh ra như thế". Họ không hiểu rằng trong những kiếp quá khứ, họ đă tự tạo ra chính họ, nhưng có thói quen xem tính khí họ như vật bất biến mà người ta tặng cho họ, cũng như một người có thể sinh ra đă đui mù hay què quặt vậy. Họ không nhận rơ họ có bổn phận sửa đổi tánh xấu của họ. Họ không biết rằng họ có khả năng sửa đổi và họ không thấy tại sao họ phải nhọc công như thế.

Thường thường người bậc trung không thấy được lư do nào đủ sức thúc giục y đảm đương công việc rất khó nhọc để sửa đổi tánh t́nh. Vài người nói với y rằng: "Nếu bạn không sửa đổi tánh t́nh th́ bạn không được lên Thiên Đàng". Nhưng nhiều người trả lời rằng đối với họ sự buồn bực ở trên Trời không thể diễn tả được và họ hy vọng có một tương lai khác hơn. Thật ra, chắc chắn lư thuyết về đời sống trên cơi Thiên Đàng dù được truyền bá rộng răi, nó cũng ít có ảnh hưởng thực tiễn đến đa số quần chúng, chắc chắn bởi v́ nó ít đúng với sự thật. Trong tất cả những lư thuyết mà tôi đă biết, chỉ có một lư thuyết dường như có thể thúc đẩy con người cố gắng được mà thôi: đó là giáo lư Thông Thiên Học. Thông Thiên Học chỉ cho chúng ta việc nào đáng cho chúng ta phải cố gắng. Nó cũng chỉ cho chúng ta biết rằng chúng ta có đủ cơ hội và th́ giờ để thành công một cách trọn vẹn. Nếu con người hiểu được Thiên Cơ và t́m cách phụng sự nó, th́ y đă t́m được động lực mạnh mẽ nhất để góp công vào sự tiến hóa và chuẩn bị cho nhiệm vụ đó. Rồi y nhận biết rằng y có thể sửa đổi triệt để tính khí và bẩm chất của y và y biết chắc chắn sẽ thành công.

Chơn Ngă quyết định tiến hóa, lo phát triển Phàm Nhơn và làm cho các thể thấp ḥa nhịp với Ngài đặng thành những khí cụ để cho Ngài dùng. Mọi sự ham muốn thuộc về loại khác và bản tính trái ngược chứng tỏ rằng nó không thuộc về Linh Hồn. Do đó, chúng ta không nói: "Tôi muốn cái này", mà lại nói : "Tinh chất dục vọng của tôi lại hoạt động. Nó muốn cái này hoặc cái kia, nhưng tôi là Chơn Ngă, tôi muốn tiến hóa. Tôi muốn cộng tác với Thiên Cơ. Tính khí và những sự ham muốn bất thường này đối với tôi không có nghĩa ǵ hết". Khi mà một sự ham muốn chưa được thỏa măn c̣n có thể làm cho con người đau khổ, th́ chắc chắn y c̣n tự đồng hóa với tinh chất dục vọng của y.

Nhưng mấy người đó chưa thấy được Chơn Sư, v́ khi đứng trước Thánh Dung, hào quang rực rỡ, th́ sự ham muốn nào cũng tiêu tan hết, chỉ trừ việc muốn sao cho được giống như Ngài vậy. Nhưng trước khi có hạnh phúc được đối diện với Ngài, nếu con chí quyết th́ con có thể tập tánh đoạn tuyệt được.


A. B. Điều này c̣n nhắc nhở chúng ta nhớ lại một đoạn Kinh trong quyển Thánh Ca Bhagavad Gita như sau : "Những đối tượng của giác quan, chớ không phải sự ham muốn những đối tượng này, sẽ quay đi chỗ khác tránh xa người tiết dục, và sự ham muốn c̣n lại cũng bỏ y mà đi, khi người ấy thấy được Đấng Tối Cao " [37].

Tất cả dục vong đều tiêu tan, khi con người thấy thoáng qua một đối tượng duy nhất đáng ước mong. Bởi đó khi bạn được phép thấy Chơn Sư th́ sự hiện diện của Ngài giúp bạn không những thoát khỏi những điều ham muốn, mà c̣n giải trừ ngay tánh ham muốn nữa. Tánh ham muốn là một cái rễ có nhiều nhánh nhóc; người ta ra công chặt đứt những nhánh nhóc này, nhưng khi mà rễ cái c̣n th́ nó sẽ sinh những nhánh nhóc mới khác mà sự hiệp nhất với Đức Thầy sẽ giải thoát bạn khỏi cội rễ của mọi sự ham muốn.

Tuy nhiên, Đức Thầy nói với chúng ta rằng, trước đó, nếu con muốn, th́ con sẽ đạt được Tánh Đoạn Tuyệt. Ba chữ "Nếu con muốn" chứng tỏ một sự quan trọng đặc biệt. Chúng chỉ cho chúng ta thấy đâu là chỗ khó khăn. Không phải chỉ là tài năng mà thôi, nhưng hầu hết luôn luôn không có ư chí hoạt động. Nếu nghị lực của bạn dùng để lo lắng cho công việc của bạn trên Đường Đạo cũng bằng nghị lực của bạn sử dụng để điều khiển hoạt động của bạn ở thế gian, th́ sự tiến bộ của bạn sẽ nhanh chóng hơn nhiều.

C. W. L. Đây là một trong những câu châm ngôn đẹp nhất trong quyển sách quí giá này. Thật thế, khi bạn thấy được Chơn Sư và hiểu được Ngài là sao, th́ mọi dục vọng thấp hèn của bạn đều tiêu tan. Trọn cả con người bạn đều thấm nhuần một thứ ǵ cao thượng hơn. Nhiều người mong muốn có Tánh Đoạn Tuyệt, nhưng họ luôn luôn bám víu vào những vật họ ham muốn và họ đau khổ khi thiếu chúng nó. Thật sự họ không ước mong có Tánh Đoạn Tuyệt đâu. Họ chỉ có tư tưởng cầu mong mà thôi. Đó chỉ là bề ngoài, chớ không phải trong thâm tâm của Phàm Nhơn họ. Điều hay hơn hết chúng ta nên tự vấn chúng ta trên phương diện này, chúng ta suy xét kỹ lưỡng để xem coi chúng ta có quả thật thoát khỏi những dục vọng thấp hèn này chưa. Người Thông Thiên Học thường cho rằng ḿnh đă đạt được Tánh Đoạn Tuyệt và xem dục vọng như những vật vô hại, nhưng có nhiều vật nhỏ mọn không đáng kể đó lại bám rễ rất sâu. Người ta tảo thanh chúng nó trên mặt, nhưng chúng nó xuất hiện lại dưới những h́nh thức mới và thật khó quả quyết là chúng nó mất hẳn. Phước thay cho chúng ta, trong t́nh trạng hiện tại, không phải bắt buộc tận diệt các dục vọng. Sau khi được Điểm Đạo, những rễ của vài thứ dục vọng c̣n sống sót, nhưng rồi phải nhổ tận gốc chúng. Tuy nhiên, tốt hơn hết nên nhổ sạch chúng ngay bây giờ đây. Bước tiến hóa của chúng ta sẽ dễ dàng và nhanh chóng hơn. Chúng ta thực hiện điều này được, v́ Đức Thầy không hề khêu gợi điều ǵ mà chúng ta không thể làm được, dù Ngài có đưa đến cho chúng ta những nhiệm vụ để thử thách sự bền chí hay sức mạnh tinh thần của chúng ta; đó là những nhiệm vụ cần thiết nếu chúng ta muốn tiến bộ nhanh chóng.
[9/17/2011 8:46:54 PM] Phuc: Con dang o Dalat, Con ban phai di co viec nen khong tham gia tiep duoc, hen gap lan sau. Phuc
[9/17/2011 9:35:38 PM] *** Call ended, duration 3:32:21 ***