Jorge Angel Livraga

Demographic growth

2011-07-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

It is impossible to broach this subject without thinking of Malthus who, in 1798 wrote: ‘the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence’’. As always, this visionary had to endure the most acerbic criticisms, which turned to ridicule when the industrial development of the 19th Century, the exploitation of the great reserves in new countries and the technical advances in the transport and preservation of food painted a bright future or at least much more favorable than outlined by the so-called ‘Malthusians’.

But the statistics of the ‘Belle Époque’ where imbued with a certain romanticism and therefore not totally scientific, and their prognostics were based purely and exclusively on European Society, assuming that the rest of the world would come to function as an immense field of production of primary resources for the benefit of western civilization. As the XXth century advanced, the outlook got darker and darker, and Malthus was referred to with more respect and fear.

The advances in preventive medicine, geriatrics and child care, the natural balance damaged the natural equilibrium and the child and elderly populations have grown proportionately, while adults have been reducing their work hours as their tasks have become easier. A veritable demographic explosion took place in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, tripling the world population in a century.

It is to be understood that the same proportion of the active population did not increase, but rather the passive part increased catastrophically. Moreover, the greatest levels of reproduction occurred precisely in human groups with the least amount of buying power and the problem of hunger made itself felt in an alarming way.

Countries of Asia, Africa, and America that before the Second World War, were exporting some 11 millions tons of grain, later needed to import 25 million tons annually. This gave a worldwide dimension to the problem.

Experiments launched by Special Departments of the United Nations, showed that, in Africa and Asia, around 1950, increasing agricultural technology and exploiting non-traditional resources did not solve the problem. It was seen that the population used the better living conditions to ‘’explode’’ demographically, so that those experimental zones were turned into nightmares and must today resort to, for their maintenance, exhausting work regimens, importations of ‘donations’, and having to support levels of poverty worse than have been recorded since Neolithic times.

Historical Antecedents

We have asked ourselves if this is the first time that humanity has encountered this problem, in order to try to draw upon antecedents that could bring us a valid experience for our times.

Our investigation hits the practically insurmountable wall of evidence that what we call ‘history’ is barely a minuscule part of the past, and not of all of mankind, but rather of the Mediterranean basin, and of various more or less isolated and half-known areas. The oldest treatises’ that we have are of Hindu and Chinese origin which are too adulterated, or of which only miserable fragments remain. And among the latter, none specifically deal with what we understand by ‘history’, nor are they ‘chronological’ at least for the modern researcher.

In the Hindu ‘Puranas’, there is an account that is perhaps relevant, being the reference to past humanities or cycles of civilization that had existed before ours, and were apparently destroyed by horrible cataclysms, by natural means and by means caused by man, through the use of uncanny processes that they extracted from certain metals, with destructive results.

It can therefore be said that mankind never perishes, but in a more or less cruel way, manages to reduce its possibilities for survival. Moreover, in reality, those proto-historical texts which are obscure and conceived for a mentality that no longer exists, help us very little, and that which is clear to us is that, even if it really isn’t, the problem seems new to us and its solution should be conceived without delay.

Many Possibilities

Unfortunately the problem of demographic explosion is so serious and pressing, that it has surpassed at least for the time being, mankind’s capacity for reacting, and the confusion has encouraged the most unrealistic proposals. From these, we will select a few, pointing out the difficulties.

A) Let the rich countries help the most poor. Impractical, because where do these great powers get their riches if not from their advantageous trade with the rest of the world? This would then create a closed circle in which the poor would get more and more poor and moreover, would slowly go into debt, losing at the same time strength and autonomy. The Latin Americans, for example, know through sad experience that ‘’cheap is expensive’’.

B) Encourage the production of food in laboratories and marine resources. Impractical, since the costs are enormous and there is no time to make them affordable for them to be effective. Moreover, the last to benefit would be precisely the poor countries that would be incapable of setting up such industries.

C) A redistribution of the world population since it is known, for example, that in America and Africa there are enormous areas of uncultivated land. This could be accomplished, but would require a change in mentality difficult to achieve without deep changes in political, social, and economic conceptions. Without a world government, this does not appear feasible in the next decades.

D) Explore the cosmos in search of more living space. Impractical, because aeronautical technique is still in its infancy, and when it becomes possible to accomplish these migrations, millions of people will have died, and the problem will have been overcome with the most painful methods.

E) Incite a greater collective consciousness with the goal of spontaneously regulating births. Utopic, those who are reproducing do not have that conscience, and it would take centuries to develop it .

The Solution

The exercise of philosophy predisposes us to the resolution of problems and to handle new situations. The search for Essences creates the ineffable habit of postponing personal interests and useless concepts, for the benefit of a solution that is at once practical and moral.

Walking without carrying the weight of old dogmas, nor carrying the full bags of the stones of dialectic materialism, placing one’s sight forward and upward and not to the left and the right, allows anyone to recover the now least common of the senses; paradoxically, common sense.

Therefore we do not see the solution in any of the plans previously put forward, but rather a learned combination of them all, with the scientific input of the specialist in demographics, which they have, and which is good, but are confounded by political and religious interests.

If the demographic explosion is a bad thing, we need to consider it like the measles or the bubonic plague, in a way that would be necessary to develop vaccines and inoculate all of those at risk.

In the case that concerns us, let there be a scientific control of births, managed by doctors and specialists, without prior opinion polls or debates in the more or less inoperative parliaments. While the theorists, moralists, representatives and deputies discuss in comfortable niches, millions of children continue to be born deformed, and condemned to misery and premature death.

This issue is too important to be playing around as we do concerning human dilemmas.

We need to act. Specifically, applying a form of periodical control that regulates a limited amount of predetermined births according to the conditions of each region, and at the same time, implement through all channels the increase of production and the collective awareness of the problem.

If these emergency methods give results, there will be time to decrease them.

Before the customary voices that clamor for the ‘’right to live’’ we oppose not reasons, but the palpable reality of millions of hungry people, whom our indolent attitude denies them the right to live.

To those who invoke religious motives, we ask that, like the master of Nazareth, they multiply bread and fish RIGHT NOW. If they cannot do so, they should stop judging science.

To the ambitious ‘nationalists’, who think that their countries would be more powerful if they had a greater population, we remind them that we are in the ‘atomic age’, and that today an army of a million men is in the hands of small groups of technicians that control a few missiles with nuclear heads.

There is no justification to prolong this agony of so many human beings, nor to promote the genocide of millions in the coming years. If we do not dare to solve this problem, if we do not have a HEART that cares for those disinherited children of Asia, Africa, and America, having conquered the moon, will be of little value, and we will never have the moral right to call ourselves HUMANS.

2009-05-31T17:30:00.000-07:00

'Every man and every woman not only need to have clothes, food, and in the best of cases, a car, but also something which is more important: we need to have, you might say, a bit of dignity, a handful of glory. But today’s world and the crisis in force are tearing away that little handful of dignity and glory. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether we are well dressed, nor eat like princes; but it is important to be happy with ourselves and to have that little bit of glory, that handful of inner satisfaction that is the only one that will allow us to assimilate the food that we have in our mouths, the thoughts that we have in our head, the emotions that we have in our heart. It is really urgent to know ourselves.'

from 'How and Where to Know Ourselves' , par. 16

Prophecies for the year 2000, part 2

2009-03-31T14:16:00.000-07:00

There will be comparative studies done of not only the current great religions, bit also of the religions of the past. Today, no one, if they have a university education and a certain level of understanding and study, can say that the ancient religions were dictated by the devil. Nonetheless, a hundred years ago, this was accepted.

Today we can no longer accept that. We can no longer accept in any way that the great Greek philosophers, like a Socrates or a Plato, were influenced by a kind of animal with big horns, a tail and hoofs, who whispered to them the principles of The Republic or the principles of Being and Existing. We can no longer conceive of an Aristotle that was possessed by demons just before expounding on his Dialectics.

Today we recognize, everyone recognizes, those of us who say so and those of us who don’t, that from the most remote antiquity there were enlightened men, men who thought, men who could delve into the important questions. And the comparative study of these men, between their thought, between their works, will give us a renewed strength, a new impulse and new optimism. Because if within those fraternities and small groups, men who lived and taught emerged, why can’t we do it today? Today they can emerge as well.

The study of the Chivalric Orders of the Middle Ages, for example, is going to become more and more important and meaningful. Up until now, what has been shown of the Middle Ages, especially to the children, is what? Well, that there would be a man holding a very big stick, like a staff, and another man holding a very big stick, like a staff, and they would meet on a bridge. They would then throw themselves into a head on collision and fracture each others skulls. This is more or less what the average person thinks of the Middle Ages. There’s also a lady who always wears this large hat, always peering out of a castle, waiting for a knight that will never arrive.

It is obvious that all of this no longer satisfies us and that the Middle Ages have a different message, a different force. The Orders of Chivalry were something more than two imbeciles breaking each others’ heads at a crossroad. We are beginning to realize that a series of veils have been placed over those elements. In order to see or in order to bear the present, the past has been smeared. The newer research will however will make the humanity that will reach the year 2000 realize and perceive the importance of the olds forms of culture and what can be extracted from them.

Today, the Martial Arts of the Ancient Orient are being studied. Do you think that one hundred years ago , in 1875, somebody in a university chair, in a public place, among the civilized people or Europe, would think that it was necessary to study the codes of Japanese or Chinese Martial Arts? No, on the contrary, this would have been a total aberration. Yet today we are studying them.

Today we recognize that beyond the modern forms such as Japanese Jiu Jitsu, there were very ancient schools that used to train monastic knights in the Far East. And today, there are thousands and thousands of young people who practice these principles, some in a better way than others. And many youths have been helped by these, because these teachings, despite that which the sensationalist movies want to show us with individuals who throw big punches at each other and with the exploits of 007 and 007 and a half who are fighting, today’s youngsters sometimes find in the simple salutation before a tatami, a mysticism that they may not find elsewhere. It’s certain that through the control of their own body, they are trying to assert themselves in a society that does not give them strength and that, in a way, has left them alone.

We will also have to review, in this progression towards the year 2000, our political forms, Many political forms have already been tried, and none of them has been found completely satisfactory; and I’m not saying completely satisfying for everybody, because we will never all be satisfied. It’s like this lecture or talk. Some will say that I didn’t speak well, others will say that I spoke even worse, and others will ask how come I didn’t talk about other subjects. Which means that you won’t agree with each other. In politics, it is the same. Everybody can’t agree with a specific form of government; everybody can’t agree on a specific form of policy; but everybody will agree about the fact that it is necessary to deeply investigate all forms because they have not generated what they could give or what they promised to give.

This deep investigation of politics will lead to a conversion of politics into a Science of Politics, where the one who is in politics holds a Doctorate in Politics, like today where someone who practices medicine holds a Doctorate in medicine; the same with engineering, etc. Which means that Politics will have to abandon, let’s say its primitive and pre-scientific stage of improvisation, so that the ones who talk about politics can be the ones who have studied and know what has been going on up to now, and who have knowledge and capacities, because of their serious preparation; in the same way as the ones who speak of medicine or engineering have necessarily studied and gone through a preparation in Medicine or Engineering.

Perhaps then the politicians will stop fighting with each other. Why is there fighting among Politicians? Because there is no Science. In the same way, doctors used to fight in the stage of pre-scientific medicine, when they were saying that such disease was cured with toad saliva, whereas others said that it was healed with iguana saliva. And such was the fighting between doctors.

Today there are some basic, elementary medicines recognized by all and that are used by all doctors. When Politics gets to this scientific stage where things become clear and stop being opinions and start to become judgments, then this perpetual political race will end. Politics will be converted into the “Art of the Just conduct of the people”.

We are also going to encounter a new expression of Art; that’s to say we’ll find a new expression for Art that will try to transmit a message to people. The era of improvisation will also disappear little by little in the field of Art by the year 2000. This era of confusion when for instance, it doesn’t matter if a frame is set upside down; this will also fade away. Today, sometimes we don’t know if a frame is set upside down or not, because it only represents a formless mixture impossible to decipher. The forms of snobbery will also disappear in the face of a tighter and more open society; a society where gossip will have less importance.

In the face of this new Society, pseudo-artistic forms won’t survive. Today, when we attend an art, music, or painting event what happens? Well, sometimes while looking at a painting, trying to be like everyone else, we wonder “and this, what is it?” but of course trying not to let our bewilderment show on our face! We can see quite often, when we go to the movies or to one of those documentary films, the man hosting the film saying “And here, we can see the wonderful artwork of the painter Don Juan de los Palotes. Look how magnificent it is! And you see six stripes and a big spot. With this he wanted to represent “The Battle of Teruel”. And then everybody saying “Hum, very nice indeed…” But all we see is a big patch and it seems that we are the dumbest person in the world, who doesn’t understand a thing about painting. It is the same thing when, in a concert hall, we are presented avant-garde music that the specialized magazines have glorified, wherein a man gives a few strokes on the keyboard of a piano and the piece’s title is “Variations on a theme from Mozart”.

We are surprised about the general public opinion that considers that such painting, such sculpture or such piece of music conveys a great richness, an artistic message, when in reality, it is only a confused, deformed and sick reflection of a mind that is also sick and contaminated. Yet, everybody seems to agree that this is Art. Therefore, we often ask ourselves whether it’s because we were born so dumb, so stupid or because we picked up a hereditary flaw from a great grandfather, considering that faced with such music, such painting, such politics, we don’t understand anything.

This feeling of rejection that we are made to feel propels us towards a year 2000 where we can strive to live better. And such demanding and seeking of professionalism, such seeking of reliability, authenticity and truth, because we are tired of hearing lies, lies of all kinds; and because we want things to be clear and straight; this will bring a feeling of human fraternity; but a human fraternity that is real and not a human fraternity that is made up, that exists only in lightly spoken words, when for instance we say “I never forget my donation for the poor children of Africa!”. And then, later on, while we are eating a sandwich, drinking a glass of wine, reading in the newspaper “56,000 people starving in India! Imagine that, those poor people!”, and then we keep on eating our sandwich.

This means that in reality, our fraternity is not a fraternity of heart, but something simply theoretical. We talk of fraternity between men of different worlds, of course, but we don’t talk about fraternity with our janitor, we don’t talk of fraternity with our own brother, we don’t talk of fraternity with our friends.

The fraternity we need, the fraternity that would form the basis of the art of living together for the year 2000, is not a theoretical fraternity applied on abstract masses but a real living fraternity. It is Concord. The fraternity between a man and another man, between a woman and another woman, between a man and a woman. More then anything we need to learn to be good to our dog before being good to the Martians.

We need to learn to live with ourselves, to tolerate our own faults, to admire our greatness’, to put up with our pettiness’, to speed up our slowness’, to elevate all that is valuable within us, as an inner construction.

We need to accomplish a great inner work; that great inner work which is the great liberation of man.

That’s why New Acropolis proposes, for this launch towards the year 2000, the recreation of a new humanism. It proposes the formation of cores of Philosophical Fraternities where Men can meet each other, look at each other in the eyes and do what they think, with no violence, no fear, with the authenticity to say this, to think that; to have the courage to assert and proclaim our own convictions.

New Acropolis proposes the comparative study of Religions, Sciences, and Arts in order to arrive at the real understanding of that which underlies all of these things. Because we are getting tired of the superficiality. Because we can’t live on varnishes. Because we want to breath and drink air and water that is purer and deeper.

New Acropolis proposes the investigation of the unexplored laws of Nature and of the inner Man. That’s to say the knowledge of where I come from, who I am and where I am going. But without being told; I must see it for myself; to be able to somehow live it; I must feel something, experience it, feel it and live it even though I can’t explain it to myself in a rational way. I have to feel, like I feel when touching a column and say “Here, there is a column”. And not something rationalized, something Byzantine like saying for instance “Could it be possible, dear friends, that a column exists at this place? Let’s see, who believes so and who doesn’t agree?” In this world of opinions, we are all going crazy. We can no longer unite through the lower dimension; we need to do it like columns that unite together in the heights where their capitals bloom; there , in the highest part. The multiple and vain opinions are of no use to us; what we need is to put the hands of the body on corporeal things, and the hands of the soul on things of the soul. That’s to say to arrive at the perception, the direct contact, to face these fundamental truths. And then will come a year 2000 that won’t be only new, but that will also be better.

What we propose in this pyramid of evolution in which we live, is to scale our own side of the pyramid, always trying to go upwards and ahead; always trying to go to the highest part and not to the lowest; trying not to poison Nature, trying not to ruin the souls of other people, trying not to exploit the weak, trying not to hurt the ones who live around us.

We want to reach the year 2000 trying to build a New Acropolis, a new High City that does not cut us from the Past, that does not cut us from the Future. A High City that gives us the possibility to leave this stifling present; that allows us to feel that behind us there is something, that our past is noble, that we have not descended from a race of apes neither from decadent or degenerated beings, but that we have descended from men who sought the stars like we do and that ahead of us, there are generations who will know how also seek the valid aspects of Life and Death; generations who are going to investigate, who are going to try to encounter God in every way and who will try to encounter themselves.

From there, what we see for the year 2000, is not only a World that is New but also a World that is Better, and This, will be the result of the work of each of us. May no one say “I can’t”. We all can; in one way or another; at one level or another; in society or in an individual way, we can all say “I can do what I want, what my Will dictates to me”. That’s to say that we all can, in a certain way, meet ourselves. To do whatever little good action a day or a week; investigate what we want to know; enter into contact with the people we want to know.

We can already be living this year 2000, because I say to you that we are all contemporaneous, but we don’t live the same Time. That’s to say we all live in the same year, but mentally, we don’t live the same psychological year. If we can make this effort of consciousness; if we can reject the varnishes I was speaking of earlier; if we can deepen and reach the vein in the wood of History; if we can remove form the surface of the water the impurities that fell in and darkened it and mange to drink the deep, clear waters, then we are already living in the year 2000! We can all manage to live this year 2000, psychologically, fraternally, even if we should die tomorrow.

Prophecies for the year 2000, part1

2009-03-21T17:52:00.000-07:00

First of all, I would like to clarify that, for those who are very young, who will live to see the year 2000, who will be able to live in that New and Different World, and for those of us who are not so young and might not live to see it but are nevertheless interested because of our children, our disciples, our loved ones or for the work we leave behind, I would like to clarify for everyone before anything that we have chosen the year two thousand as a point of reference. I do not believe that in the year two thousand, something different is going to happen; because the year two thousand is according to the Christian chronology. If we took the Muslim chronology, for example, we would have to deduct six centuries; if we used the Hebrew chronology, we would have to add several millennium; and if we used the Buddhist chronology we would have to add on another half a millennium, etc. To say that we are in this or that year is basically a chronological arrangement that is determined amongst groups of people and does not really contain any form of dramatic prophecy as is generally seen in those prophecies that announce “the end of the world”.

Everyone knows that around the year 1000, a lot of prophecies were given; there were people who committed suicide or left all their belongings to the Church or to their friends, thinking that some strange comet will come and blow up the Earth, or that some wicked angel will exterminate everyone on the planet.

It is that feeling of fear, of terror, that we must rid ourselves of. It’s true that we are in a kind of “turning point in History”, but this turning point will not arrive as punctually as when we say that in a certain year or on a certain date such and such thing will happen. The premonition of the end of the world or the destruction of humanity is an almost infantile terror that is found in the collective subconscious.

It is obvious that humanity is very old. Archaeological and historical investigations show us that an advanced and civilized humanity, a humanity who thinks - perhaps not the technological mankind that we know, but yes, a mankind who manipulates basic tools, a mankind who loves, who suffers and who dies, has existed for millions of years and will very probably continue to exist for millions more.

We may ask ourselves, nonetheless, what will humanity of the year 2000 be like? First of all, it’s important to understand that History, the course of History, like all things, is cyclical; and the study of History, like all things, teaches us that mankind is part of Nature.

It has been demonstrated that Space is circular. Everyone knows the laws of Einstein that state that not only is Space circular but that Time is also. Everything develops in a circular form. We know that the constellations travel on circular paths; that the Earth, the planets, etc., also function under that law, by the law of eternal return.

Therefore, to project the present time into the future time of the year two thousand would be a mistake; a mistake equivalent to what a futurologist of fifty or sixty years ago, who thought that in 1975, the world would be a projection of what had developed in the preceding century. However things did not happen like that ; great changes occurred.

The person in the year 1000 who tried to visualize what the year 2000 would be like, would have thought that maybe in the year 2000 or in this year, 1975, in many respects, it would be the same, we would all be engaged in a pilgrimage. For the Muslims it would be to the Mecca, for the Christians to the Holy Land, etc. However today, fortunately or unfortunately, nobody is very preoccupied about going on a pilgrimage to the Mecca or to the Holy Land. Today, interests are different; because the interest’s of every age are completely different .

People living in the year 2000 will have interests, will have inclinations completely different from ours as well.

Let’s analyze the possibilities, let’s analyze the trajectories in order to see what we can say about that period that we have fixed at the year 2000 and in what manner we can be part of that current of History.

It’s obvious, for example, that there are a series of studies currently being done in various fields that are going beyond what we could call official science. Everyone knows that official science is muddled in a certain inertia. If mankind would had followed official science (I will give a give a few examples) perhaps Columbus’ ships would not have arrived in America. Because according to the official science of the day, America did not exist and according to the official science of the day, the Earth was not round.

And if we would have left things to official science, we would not have airplanes either, because the universities of the last century maintained and “scientifically” demonstrated that objects heavier than air could not fly; only objects lighter than air could. We would not be able to split atoms either; nor would we be able to communicate over distances by radio and telephone, because official science has, in general, always opposed these innovations; it has always maintained a kind of inertia that looks more towards the past than towards the future.
There are investigations being carried out today that official science practically ignores. Let’s look at some of them, such as the problem of Parapsychology, for example.

The word parapsychology itself doesn’t mean anything, since as you know, it means “that which is beyond Psychology”. And how can we study something that we can’t even define? If you asked me “What is behind this door?” and I were to answer “Ah! What is on the other side of this door is that which is beyond the door”. In reality, that wouldn’t explain anything. But if I where to say that behind the door, there’s my office, there’s a desk, an electric typewriter, a filing cabinet, etc., then you would have an idea of what is behind the door; whereas by saying that what is behind the door is that which is behind the door, I wouldn’t be saying anything.

In the same manner, Parapsychology deals with things that are beyond common psychological phenomena, but an in-depth investigation of this phenomena has not been developed. There has been more development in the investigation of the tricks that could be done to fake this phenomena and therefore prove that this phenomena is not real. Which means that we go back to the same mentality as when it was denied that the Earth was round; there was the attempt to deny the rotundity of the Earth based on speculations. And it is the same with this.

There are a number of investigations and observations pertaining to the fact that there is more than what we understand to be simple Psychology; there are miles of archives that record cases of telepathic communication between two people; of people who have lifted themselves from the ground by way of a phenomenon called levitation; people that accomplish very strange phenomena, such as Mr. Uri Geller, who bent spoons or adjusted watches from a television stage, etc. Some say that they really occurred, others say that they were faked. Nevertheless, there is no serious study, and the studies that depend on testimonies do not arrive at an agreement as to the conclusions, which demonstrates a lack of scientific method. Because if I tell you that water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, we all agree, no one will come and say “No, it’s three parts hydrogen”, and someone else who would say “actually, water is made up of chlorine” or “it’s really made of fluoride…” Why? Because we have arrived at an agreement that two parts hydrogen with one part oxygen forms water, that is, we have arrived at an observation; the composition of water has become what we can call a “scientific truth”.

But in regards to Parapsychology, we have not arrived at a scientific truth. There evidently exists curative methods by way of forces that some call spiritual while others call them psychological or magnetic forces. Nevertheless, today , even among doctors, some make use of simple hypnosis while others do not. Some say that hypnosis comes from the use of will power, that is to say, from an animic force that is transmitted through the human organism to achieve the power of suggestion over another person; and others say that hypnosis is simply a sort of state of manipulation of a person being faced with someone who stares them in the eyes or moves something shiny in front of them.

It is obvious that in the years to come, towards the year 2000, the study of Parapsychology will be done more seriously. It is useless to place barriers in front of things that are evident.
It cannot be guaranteed, even though we know little about flying saucers, that something, from somewhere, does not exist, because there are testimonies regarding this. To be sure, they could be machines, they could be natural phenomena or secret weapons from Russia or North America, or atmospheric reflections of an unknown type; they could be natural micro-satellites that penetrate within our atmosphere, or the so-called St-Elmo’s fire, etc. Many theories exist, but in reality, something of the sort exists and that is what people see.

Science will also open up to these fields, that is, the field of knowledge of things that today are not official. In various institutions, chairs, institutes, laboratories will be created that will, in a serious manner, investigate that outer nature that we ignore as well as that inner nature which we also ignore.

Despite all the archaeological investigations that have been done and that have demonstrated that it is absolutely impossible that during antiquity, with a simple system of pulling with rope, huge rocks, like the great ruins of Egypt for example, could have been moved; yet official science continues to affirm this. Official science continues to maintain that the great masses of stones that can be seen at Tiahuanaco or at Machu Picchu have been transported, let us say “miraculously”, always pulled with a rope, because if it wasn’t otherwise it wouldn’t be considered scientific, across half of the Andes mountains. This statement is completely harebrained and yet regardless, they continue and continue to maintain it…

It is still maintained, for example, that to build the Pyramid of Keops, huge masses were lifted to a height of more than 145 meters, with a ramp. Besides the fact that the remains of this ramp were never discovered, it has been demonstrated that if this ramp had existed it would have had such a length and width as to be greater than that of the Pyramid itself. It has also been proven that in order to be able to transport these great masses pulled by ropes made from palm fibers, the ropes would have to have a thickness so large and a length so great that they would weigh almost as much as the rock, seeing as at that time they didn’t have either the plastic or the metal alloys that we have today. Furthermore, it can be deduced that the quantity of men needed to pull these masses would have been enormous; and since they had neither refrigerated trucks nor trains, nor boats, not aerial bridges, in order to feed these people, in order to sustain them, it would have required a greater multitude than Egypt had ever seen.

All these considerations continue to be kept quiet in the official chairs, or, in order to deal with them, they have become accustomed to attaching simplistic explanations to them.
Those phenomena that we have seen in archaeology will also be investigated in greater depth from other points of view as we approach the year 2000. And it is not because the phenomena has changed, what has changed is the vision of man, being able to explore different angles. If I wanted to know, for example, what is this small relief, I would not only have to look at it from the angle that I’m seeing it now, but also from the front, and from a different angle, from the top, from the bottom; I would have to detach it from the wall to see what it is made of, because just by looking at it, I won’t be able to find out if it’s made of bronze, of plastic or something else.
In that way, there will be an opening in Science towards a wider form of concepts. They will no longer consider things they do not know as “unscientific”, they will simply consider them unexplored. They will no longer make roundabout statements about the characteristics of man that have not as of yet been clearly defined. Science will apparently slow its progress, but it will be more like halting its dogmatizations, that is, making statements about things that have not been sufficiently tested. Science, in this apparent restraint, will open up, nonetheless, to new fields of man, of Nature and the relation between man and Nature, because we know that as we have distanced our lives from Nature, we have poisoned it.

People thought at first “Why should I care if Nature becomes polluted!”; but they did not realize that Nature is like a mirror and if we tarnish it, a time will come when our own image gets obscured or gets blurred. This means that the contamination that we have caused turns to our disadvantage and affects us biologically and psychologically. This is one of the points that we will be able to see more objectively as we gradually approach the year 2000.

There will also be a wider and more open investigation of religious problems. We will see that mankind, after the experimentation that began in the age of Enlightenment and the Cartesian experimentation, will little by little end up exhausting the experiments of a purely scientific-materialist type. Mankind has arrived at the realization that you cannot weigh or measure the soul; but in one way or another, we all know that the soul exists. Whether we believe in the immortality of the soul or not, whether we believe in a specific religious form or not, inside of every normal person, inside of every man, of every woman, especially if that person is young at heart, all feel that something exists beyond that which is simply material, we all feel that we have something inside ourselves that gives us an impulse and justifies us.

This interest, perhaps not for formal religions, bur certainly for mysticism, will also continue to develop. It is obvious that the current generation of young people have a greater interest in religious questions than the generation of young people of fifty or a hundred years ago. But that interest has to be properly channeled. It is logical that young people often tend to group together in a more or less disorganized manner, and so they begin to read books, and those books have a big influence over those who read them (the books with the greatest print run are generally the best sellers and are perhaps the most superficial) making many people feel that they guide them in their search. But the searching is there.

And we are certain that the cradles will be full of children who, more and more, will have need of this mystique, of a little solitude. Our great large cities, our megalopolis’ that we thought could arrive at a kind of image of paradise, in reality have become a reflection if not of a hell, then a kind of cemetery. The people, those who can, try to live outside of the big cities or if not, spend a few months of vacation outside of them, because in the big cities, on top of feeling alone, we feel crushed by the human mass.

Demographic growth, which is completely uncontrolled, and the methods to fight it, which we are unable to implement, force people to feel and perceive a sensation of being squeezed-in amongst the crowd of people. This is not some kind of theory, you know this. In the big cities, one only has to go out during one of the “rush” hours; where can I walk? Where can I park my car? And when I want to go in to drink a coffee, when I want to have lunch at a restaurant, I have to wait in line until others have finished before I can go in. And we all get the feeling, although we have money and live well, that we are in a kind of concentration camp where we have to be in line, one behind the other, waiting to get a bit of food.

And if we have to make a transaction in whatever government office, we clash against an enormous bureaucracy. In front of us, there is a mountain of people; behind us, there’s another mountain of people. When we arrive at the counter, they tell us “when your number is called, present yourself”. And we think to ourselves “ah! I no longer have a name, I’m no longer a man or a woman; now I’m a number”. And then someone shouts “number 75!” and someone answers back “that’s me!”

All of this mass alienation and numerical pressure is destroying our sense of individuality; but we have inside of us the capacity to react and to search for a New World and a Better World. The big cities will no longer be able to continue growing; the mega-cities; that are beginning to slow down, will perhaps be in recession in the year 2000. Mankind needs to return to living with Nature; and many are realizing that if you go on vacation or if you go to the country, but you bring a portable TV, a radio, a typewriter, or a tape deck, then it’s the same as not having gone at all. Mankind is beginning to perceive the beauty of his surroundings: jumping into clean water, being able to see the fish in a pond, watching the birds fly, etc. Today mankind needs a fresh return to Nature. He needs to clear himself away from the multitude, he needs a bit of solitude. This search for solitude must be contemplated by all those who wish to interpret the new currents of History that will take us to that year 2000.

Translated from lecture transcript

How and where to know oneself, part 2

2009-03-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

But then we are confronted with the problem of knowing ourselves. We won’t be able to know ourselves by looking at a photograph; it would be necessary but it isn’t enough. It would be, perhaps, as necessary as when someone is presented to us, for example, and we tell them: “Ah, it’s very nice to meet you!”, but the truth is that its just an expression since why is it so nice when I don’t know the person who is in facing me? Evidently the pleasure of meeting someone is not felt in the palm of one’s hands, and it’s the same if the pleasure is of a spiritual nature. However, we are used to talking in that way. We can know our physical aspect in terms of proportions, shape, face, body, etc., but we must also try to know ourselves on the other planes as well; and in this case, we have taken examples from the currents of India and Egypt. We must know our vital aspect, the why and how of our vital cycles; what happens inside of us, how and where the “life” inside of us flows. We must also look inside and see what part of ourselves emotes, why and at what level; the only way which we can master them, channel them is by knowing them. Sometimes we commit acts of injustice because we let ourselves be carried away by our emotions, our anger, with unthinking words that we often regret later on. How many times have we been deceived, defrauded, for no other reason than that someone has manipulated this imponderable factor. For example, the salesman who talks and talks, and manages to make us feel the need to own some book or sixteen-volume encyclopedia that we never thought we’d buy; but we are made to feel the almost physiological need to have it, the sensation that if we don’t own this book or encyclopedia, we are nothing but some uncultured beast or something. This, then, is the emotional part that we must investigate.

Through our concrete mind, with which we begin to speculate, to think, and to see how some things can be, how other things exist, we don’ realize if we are ourselves entirely, deeply, or if we are nothing more than a small part of ourselves. We must also look at what possibilities we have of being enlightened by God or by Nature; we can have some type of intuition, some way of penetrating the mysteries of life, the why and the how; we shouldn’t always be informed just by the latest books or magazines that are in style. And thus, we can finally arrive at the inner part of our soul, our inner self.

It’s urgent for us to encounter ourselves. Obviously, in order for us to encounter ourselves we must keep in mind that there are a series of elements which we must consider: elements of disappointed emotions, thoughts, dreams, illusions, hopes; and all of this has power inside of us modifying our lives; we are the age that we are, we are what we are, we have the money that we have, there are a series of imponderable elements that aren’t strictly physical but completely modify our life, our form of being, our relationship with others. We are facing a difficult world, a world in crisis, whether we look at it from a political, economical, etc. point of view. In many countries of the world, they have tried to solve things in one way or another. Nonetheless we can observe that the problems have not been solved, there is every time more delinquency, more hunger, more people without jobs or who are completely destitute. This is because none of the systems that we know of, when put into practice, succeed in establishing something that, in theory or experimentally, appeared to work.

Its obvious then that what we need is a stage of inner revolution. That’s to say, RE-EVOLUTION, a change from the inside, a great inner cleaning, a great encounter with ourselves. We need to be, as it where, stones or sand of that High City. We need to unite our wills, our dreams, and in some way, our hearts. As the philosophers of Rome say, achieving CONCORD, which means: heart to heart. As the right and left hands interlock, in order to pray, in order to grasp something- precisely because they have harmony by opposition- we, by knowing and mastering ourselves, can arrive at a concord, at a feasible hospitality between men. We all speak of hospitality, of peace, of love, and of human rights; but there is an increasing amount of hunger in the world, more people that are illiterate or are condemned to consuming pornography. There is an increasing number of students who attend University and who later cannot find employment in their field, and an increasing amount of retired people living in misery. Faced with these blights that are as real as the ground we walk upon, what use are abstractions, words, declarations? What we need is something as concrete as we are, like our thoughts, which are also as concrete as our need for existence, for hospitality, for peace, for warmth, and for beauty. Every man and every woman not only need to have clothes, food, and in the best of cases, a car, but also something which is more important: we need to have, you might say, a bit of dignity, a handful of glory. But today’s world and the crisis in force are tearing away that little handful of dignity and glory. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether we are well dressed, nor eat like princes; but it is important to be happy with ourselves and to have that little bit of glory, that handful of inner satisfaction that is the only one that will allow us to assimilate the food that we have in our mouths, the thoughts that we have in our head, the emotions that we have in our heart. It is really urgent to know ourselves.

Like plants which need water in periods of drought to bring them back to life, and like the birds that call to the morning light with their singing, we claim as a given right, that different life, that different world where not everything will be material, where there will be room for dreams, for spirit and that handful of glory, not that Napoleonic kind, but inner glory, inner dignity. We are asking for a different form of hospitality, a different treatment and a different courtesy, a different kind of man and a world that will not only be New but also Better; a world where Knights and Ladies can meet themselves and progress in that that current of life towards the New Man that will one day come. We mustn’t lose hope nor must we think that humanity is constantly progressing. Our problem is that our mechanical alienation has, obviously, made machines progress much more than man. We have, for example, a man who drove a chariot in Rome who went 40 km an hour; and today a man can fly a jet that goes 1 000 km an hour: the difference is in the machines, between the chariot and the jet, not between the men. Men continue to have problems, pains, deceptions, and continue to have needs.

Today more than ever we need to restore that ancient knowledge, to experience it again in an experimental, logical, current manner, with practical and sincere results. We don’t think that with this we are going to touch the sky with our hands. What we need to touch is the heart of man, and to once again arrive at a basic and human hospitality. That was what the old hospitality of our grandparents was like, when someone needed something, people would come and help out. Today, although we live in big cities, we live in a complete anonymity amongst ourselves and we don’t care in the least what may happen to our neighbor or to the man beside us or far away. We read in magazines, in the greatest of comfort, while we are having breakfast, that thousands of people have perished in a war or a catastrophe. We do it with a complete insensitivity, and that is because today’s world has rendered us insensitive. When we eat a bowl of soup, neither the spoon nor the bowl can taste the flavor of the soup, it simply contains it; and currently, we are containing a culture but we aren’t feeling its flavor, nor are we living it or being nourished by it. The materialistic elements must be replaced by natural ones. The material plane needs to be considered, although not as the totality, but rather as a crystallization of something superior, that is more spiritual, more lasting, something that can allow the Golden Aphrodite to rise in our heart, a kind of eternal youth where there is no sickness nor aging nor situations that change; we must be eternally young and eternally happy. But we will only achieve this by working hard, that is encountering ourselves, working on ourselves, and uniting ourselves with those who have the same preoccupations. One of the great fundamental problems of the day is that of ethics: traffickers and thieves are quick to unite and form a gang. Idealists, on the other hand, when they want to do something, when they want to promote culture, generally are divided and separated into a pseudo-individualism.

We must succeed then in changing that current of life; we must begin making the wheel of time turn, as if it were that of a windmill that is going to grind flour; that new flour that will feed that New Man that we all dream of.

How and where to know oneself, part 1

2009-03-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

We all need to know ourselves. Although it seems paradoxical, self-knowledge is one of the oldest founts of philosophy, one of the most difficult and, in certain ways one of the least explored in the natural and direct sense of the word.

We have all had little experiences in this regard; everyone has. How many times when looking at a picture that was taken of us, and I don’t know whether it’s because of vanity or some such thing, but we say: “Is that me?”. We see a face that we recognize as our own but it’s hard for us to believe it, it seems that we never look natural or that we look better or worse, or that it was out of focus or that, in one way or another, that face in the picture isn’t exactly the one that we imagine we have; as well, sometimes, when we feel that we are alone, looking into a mirror, it seems that the person in the mirror isn’t us, but rather some other person that is looking at me and although I know it’s me, in some way I also know that we are two: the reflection and myself. Another experience that everyone has experienced is recording one’s voice on a tape recorder: a speech, a conversation, the reading of a poem. Someone who hears this for the first time is really amazed to hear his voice, although he recognizes it, it sounds strange, it seems to have a higher pitch or it seems muted or something, but they don’t quite recognize their voice exactly; it isn’t the same voice that one hears when one is talking.

Even when dealing only with what is strictly physical, the outer aspect, it is very difficult to know ourselves because that implies a state of consciousness of reversion that not everyone can achieve very easily. I’m not going to broach this subject in technical terms. We are not going to make an analysis of psychoanalysis or psycho synthesis. Neither will we be dealing with the recent theories of for example the philosopher Levi, who delivered many lectures in Europe on non-conformity, the isolation of man in society or on the impossibility of man knowing himself because society, in one form or another, pressures him and deforms him to the point where it is impossible to recognize oneself. In other words, being faced with a paradoxical figure that disconcerts and creates an inner dichotomy. We are going to refer to something much older to later come back to our topic in current and practical terms.

We are going to see in what way some of the oldest peoples have dealt with this subject. We won’t be able to mention all of them, partly because we are lacking information and partly because the task would be too great. We’ll only discuss two great currents of thought: one that comes from India and another from Egypt. Egypt and India have left us documents that are sufficiently eloquent for us to see what they thought of man in his totality.

Man is not only that which we can see. What do we see of other people and what do they see of us? The truth is that we see the epithelial cells, a bit of hair, a mustache, clothes, shoes, but we don’t really see the man or woman that is in front of us. That masked and hidden reality that we have is much richer. That is the reason why our own face, which is external and material, can be altered many times by our inner life. No one will deny that we don’t have the same face when we are quietly reading a favorite book or with a friend, than in a moment when we are angered by whatever circumstance, by someone who has insulted us or because of some great injustice that has been done to us; that’s when the blood rises to the face. This medically demonstrates that there is a series of physiological changes, in the blood pressure or in the whole endocrine area, that becomes altered according to our relations with our surroundings, with the outside world, in such a way that we aren’t the same throughout the whole day; an easy thing to notice because, without being famous doctors, psychiatrists, or philosophers, we can realize that we are not the same in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night; there are days in which we wake up with a certain pessimism, a certain feeling that bad things will happen to us, that it’s not even worth the trouble of leaving the house; but it isn’t something rational, it’s something that comes from the inside. Other days we are euphoric: we sing while taking a shower, we leave the house singing, and we feel that everything is going to turn out well. It’s obvious that, physically, we aren’t the same when we are depressed than when we are euphoric but in what way? What is it inside of us that is euphoric or depressed? What makes us all of the sudden remember someone whom we have lost track of, and why do we remember at that particular instant? Why is it that at other times we practically don’t care at all about the life we have lived and the only thing that matters is the moment we are currently living? These are questions that we all ask on a daily basis at any time.

The men of India and Egypt of a thousand years ago who were philosophers, not the current ones, undertook an in-depth investigation of mankind as it existed in ancient civilizations; these men had different values from or own. You are aware that every civilization has its prejudices, a series of beliefs, a different way of life, which gives importance to certain things. Today we wonder how the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians or the Incas managed to live in the way that they did, with their social, political, economical and religious organization. If an Egyptian or an Inca would walk through this door today, and if we had the courage to refrain from getting up and leaving in a hurry, if we were able to converse with him, he wouldn’t understand us either, he wouldn’t understand our economical and political systems, nor our way of living, nor would he recognize things that today we consider entirely immoral but would appear to him, however, completely natural. And, on the other hand, things that they would look at with sincere indignation, we do every day like it was the most natural thing in the world.

We are therefore going to look at what those two great currents of thought that we have chosen, one from India, the other from Egypt. I will insist once again, so there won’t be any confusion, that I’m not referring to the India or the Egypt of today, but rather to ancient India of thousands of years ago, the one called the Aryavarta, and to the old kingdom of Kem which the Greeks rebaptized with a name that resembles the one that we use today-Egypt-and which means “that which is unknown’. These people thought that the complete man, the holistic man, isn’t made up strictly of his physical aspect, but that he had other elements interrelating in different dimensions.

We could compare it to the peels of an onion, although it isn’t exactly like that. In fact, they thought that it was like different dimensions, like the dimensions of time and space today. They considered that there exists in man a body, that the ancient Hindus called Stula Sharira which means: “a cover that one can hit, that one can touch, that one can seize with one’s hand.” The Egyptians called it Chat. In the Egyptian hieroglyphics one can often see it represented by a cube with a human head, that is to say the material part, the concrete part that we can hold, the part that is evidently physical.

Next, in a higher plane of consciousness, there was a kind of vital or energetic body that the Hindus called Prana Sharira, which is the part of that ancient Prana or energy of the great life of nature that we have in each one of us. That is, in each one of us there is a vitality that has been crystallized that is like that which is in all things and has taken a definite form: one for human beings, another for vegetables and another one for animals. The Egyptians represented this part with the Ankh, the old key of life. Today it has come back in style and many people wear it around their necks; the Ankh is the figure of the living man, the figure of the standing man.
In another dimension, a higher one, say the Hindus, there exists that which the current translators call the Astral Body. They call it Linga Sharira or “body that one cannot touch”, “luminous body”; this parts corresponds to the emotional plane of the individual, the sum of all the emotions. We would therefore have, following this line of thought, a body that encompasses in some way all our emotions, our feelings, and our sensibilities. The Egyptians represented it by the Ka or the double, the phantom; we could say that it is this invisible counterpart within us that gathers all the feelings, all the emotions.

The Hindus place above this, Kama Manas, which means, literally translated, “body of mental desires”. That is to say, it would be the part of our mind in which desires spring; not the higher mind but the speculating one, the one that measures, the one that sees what advantages I may gain, what disadvantages might others have, how may I buy things at the lowest price and sell them at the highest price. This part of the mind is the Ab-Hati of the Egyptians. They represent Ab-Hati and Bai, which signifies the mind as well, as two brothers. Ab-Hati has a very showy appearance, and Bai, on the contrary, generally appears very humbly dressed or simply naked before the light of Amen or the light of Amon, the Universal Light the everything bathes in. By analogy, that which Bai represents for the Egyptians was known in India as Manas (from the root Man = man) and characterizes human beings. As human beings, we have the characteristic of possessing, on top of a concrete speculative mind, a higher mind that even transcends us, that dreams, that progresses towards the future; a mind that imagines a Better World and a series of Archetypes.

According to the Hindus, this mind or Manas is illuminated by Budhi (from the root Bud, light, illumination): it is that which gave the Buddha his name - Siddhartha Gautama- which means : “the enlightened” and is the equivalent of Christ, which in Greek also means “the enlightened”, different from Chrestos, which means “he who will receive the light”. In Egypt, this plane was called Cheybi and was represented by a bird resembling a swallow that symbolized the resurrection to the light and all the higher things. The ancients said that this is where our power of intuition comes from, since man, in some way, can sometimes see things that are going to happen or are happening far away. There is a modern science, called Parapsychology that is undertaking great investigations in this field; the name itself obviously means nothing, because Para-Psychology signifies “that which is beyond Psychology”. It’s like the old term Meta-Phyiskae or Meta-Physics, which signifies “that which is beyond what is physical”, which also signifies nothing. It’s like if someone where to ask: “What is behind the wall that I see?”, and someone answered: “Oh, it’s the Metawall”; that is, that which is beyond the wall; merely an abstraction. When we are dealing with abstract terms it’s very difficult to speak concretely; the great difficulty for man is not in perceiving and understanding these things, since any man who has a little spirituality can easily manage it; the real problem is to seize it, placing it on a human level and being able to apply it to daily life and within ourselves successfully. Lamentably, the serious problem of many currents of “spiritualism” - or whatever you want to call it-is that they practice a series of exercises, of abstinences, of mutilations of daily life that don’t always give practical results. Which is why we see, as you know, that in many parts of the world there are people who are straining to realize their potential, to increase their memory, to be able to gain intuition, control their bodies, their emotions; and nevertheless, we see little difference between someone who doesn’t do any exercises and doesn’t study anything and someone who devotes several months of effort to this difficult task.

And finally, we have the superior part of man, which the Hindus name Atma. Atma is undefinable; it could be called the Spirit. In Egypt it is called Shu or Atmu, which is also the superior part, and which the Egyptians-with their figurative penchant-represented by a man of great height, as seen in the papyrus of Ani, from the British Museum. It’s a giant, a man with the height of a god, who has arrived at this divine dimension. It is in this way then, that they explain that man not only has a physical body, but other bodies as well, those other zones of living or points of consciousness inside of ourselves.

Lecture transcript - 'Como y donde conocerse a si mismo'

An interview with H.P. Blavatsky, part 2

2009-03-01T18:26:00.000-08:00

- Madam, everyone knows you as H.P.B. ... I don’t wish to be impolite, but my readers often ask why you name yourself Blavatsky, the name of a spouse who could have been your grandfather and with whom you refused to live. I know that it isn’t for economic reasons, since upon taking your North American citizenship you automatically renounced the important pension of a Russian general. Neither was it for prestige, since you were born a noble and were related to the family of the Czar ... Why Blavatsky?

- The truth is that I didn’t believe, in my youth, that it would have any importance. I got married impetuously in order to free myself from family control, and in order to reaffirm this, I took the name of my husband, which was the custom of the time. And afterwards ... I got used to the name and the initials, and it seemed to me a lack of respect to the memory of an old knight to return to my maiden name.

- You have severely attacked Spiritism and your teaching on “astral shells” that torture mediums became popular. Why did you practice it in despite the difficulties that it brought? And in some way where you not yourself a kind of medium in certain occasions?

- In the middle of the XIXth century, Spiritism was an explosive fashion... This has happened various times in History, and even in the Old Testament those who practice such things are condemned. Summoning the spirits of the dead, or of those who pretend to be, is the simplest, most popular form of replacing phenomena of let’s say... a religious origin. The advance of Positivist Materialism caused a regression in all the known religions, the one’s in Asia included, and some cults were so degenerated, like with the Christians with the inquisition and the corruption of the bishops, that the Hierarchy decided to encourage this Movement as a momentary opportunity for spiritual nourishment. I didn’t combat spiritism, but rather I explained what it was and the excesses into which it had fallen... many times by the hands of the very same religions. I could have been a good “medium”, and in a certain manner I was in my childhood and my adolescence, but the presence of my Master was constant and his powerful Servants protected me.

I was twenty years old when, walking with my father in Hyde park, in London, I saw my Master physically, who I had seen so many times in the Astral Light... I “felt” that he was alive, that he was a real and incarnated Being... but it caused a great emotion for me to witness this. He was walking with other Hindus and noticing my intention to approach Him, he gave me a sign not to. I told my father everything, as we were very close at that time. The next day I returned alone to the same place, and the Master was also there. We walked for hours in that park and talked about many things...

Obviously I cannot reveal everything... but we talked, above all about myself... My uniqueness was explained to me, having always been so different from most people, he explained the reasons why; he also spoke of my work in my present incarnation, and especially how to dominate my own powers and the world of elementals and other invisible beings and the strange forces that have manifested themselves in my presence. He advised me on travels, and people, and books and ... shall we leave it at that?

- It was Master K.H.?

-Excuse me.. but would you give the name of your Master in a public article? There have been too many misunderstandings and waves of spite and incomprehension because of what has filtered to the outside. In the eagerness to spread this archaic form of Philosophy known as Theosophy, we gained many friends and caused much beneficial consternation in the fight against the obscuring darkness, but we also brought up to public vituperation respectable things and the ridiculing of Sacred Books, that, unfortunately, aren’t published without transformations and fragmentations. I went through difficult trials and, in part, I’m so sick that I’m almost unable to feel the lower extremities of this poor body, for being unable to dominate my attack of nerves in front of so much injustice.

- Madam... we cannot avoid asking how H.P.B., with her extraordinary psychic powers and an exceptional capacity of concentration and mental development, was, nevertheless, so vulnerable to the attacks, which where, through their own nature and convictions, predictable that they would launched.

- This subject is very complex. I don’t know exactly why myself.. but, making a simile, think of a test tube in a chemical laboratory, in which are produced reactions that liberate strong heat and other types of vibrations. The container does not always resist and therefore cracks and carbonizations appear; this container will continue to unconsciously self-destruct and can even burn those who are closest to it. But the Work is accomplished... the athanor is irrelevant.. When it is finished breaking, it turns to dust... I want my body to be cremated and my ashes scattered... The test tube is - how would you say in the XXth century?- Contaminated.

-Tell us something about the Theosophical Society.

- I suppose that you know more than me about its development, but I can’t nor do I want to know details about the future. Of the past I can say that, when I was very young I made my first trip to Egypt, I wanted to found some form of society or center for Esoteric studies. It was several years later, in New York, when I got to know Olcott well, trying to do the same with some very influential friends, and with others who were simply curious. The 17th of November, 1875, we formed the Theosophical Society, which I helped found with the permission of my Master... Its principles changed various times in their form because the initial enthusiasm unsettled us all. However, on advice from my master, I was only officially Corresponding Secretary, since many travels awaited me in the future... The true Founder was Colonel Olcott who, as you know, is a lawyer and an expert in psychic phenomena and spiritism.

I know that without me the Theosophical Society would not have interested so many people. Today there are three centers of power: the United States, England and India, where Adyar is, which maybe one day will be its official capital at the international level. For now, it is so more in name than in reality. But I also know that I caused it much harm, because the attacks from the incompetent religious and scientific fanatics have slandered the society and many of its members through my fault. I never deceived anyone and I never missed it, since I actually had to limit the paranormal phenomena, rather than provoking it, as it was natural for me. But I wasn’t able to do things correctly, avoiding groups of people deranged by the effects of mediumship or simply by their spiritual baseness, their envy and desire for conflict. Today, while I am writing “The Secret Doctrine” and correcting its typed version, I write articles for “The Theosophist” and other theosophical and scientific magazines and have started to gather around myself that which some people call the Blavatsky Lodge: an Inner Section, which is the real Esoteric School. I know that many aren’t prepared, but it’s all I can do; to work with the human material that’s available... Not to do it would be worse, although at times I don’t know... My voices, that used to teach me, have become quiet... my Astral Mirror reflects nothing... I obey and act on, to the best of my strength, what I have been ordered.

I have also thought about writing a Glossary of words useful for reading “The Secret Doctrine”. There are many pedagogical diagrams as well that will be added with time.

- Madam, for all of those who appreciate your extraordinary and superhuman work, it is saddening for us that you couldn’t avoid so many curious people wasting your time seeking phenomena and private consultations... Today, in order for you to be able to finish your Work, I understand that the Masters have had to give you... extra vitality. Why did you squander this vitality, previously, in phenomena of limited real usefulness?

- Pardon me, but everyone is allowed to live one’s life the way one wants and can. Freedom doesn’t mean voting in a sheep-like manner, but rather something much more profound, with an individual and unchangeable root.

- Excuse me... I didn’t want to criticize your attitude, it’s just that many have suffered with you over so much ingratitude; having started a worldwide movemen, that has depended in certain respects on friends or disciples who’s commitment is based on nothing other than a personal link with yourself...

- It is a form of work, which isn’t yours, but it is mine. All forms of authority that aren’t firmly based on a spiritual concord seem ridiculous to me, and it is probable that that is one of my many faults, but the participation of one’s own personality is unavoidable... Everyone has to be who they are, and without authenticity we couldn’t do anything. I’m sorry, but I love long evenings of discussion about a thousand and one topics with people who have different views than mine. And it’s very difficult for me to refuse someone who has asked me something... I don’t believe in the transcendence of paranormal phenomena, but they have been used since the most remote antiquity. Take away the paranormal phenomena from the Bible, for example, and the Old Testament becomes nothing but a compilation of the vicissitudes of tribal band, and the New Testament becomes a series of moralizing precepts like any Stoic book. The phenomenal is an ingredient that cannot be totally done away with... The paranormal phenomena, if authentic and done without desire for profit, although very dangerous, is remembered much more than an oral or written teaching, above all for those who fear life and death... And we all, in some way fear certain aspects of this cycle of life and death. It’s not enough to remember past incarnations... as you well know.

- How come we are unable to remember anything of the periods between incarnations, when our conscience is in Devachan, or Heaven, or whatever you wish to call it?

- Because one tries to recollect with one’s mortal part, and thus one only remembers one’s mortal existences. If we elevate our conscience to that which is not directly affected by destruction, we can obtain information about that Celestial Life that Plato and so many Initiates have spoken of... And now, if you permit, I must return to my work... It’s slow... sometimes I need two days to obtain a date, a quote, a simple extract from a recently published book which I’ll never be able to read.... I thank you for the intent of this article and for having taught your disciples that my works aren’t a roof, but rather a door. In any event, the future seems difficult and thinking of it is often frustrating. It’s more advisable to do one’s work without any long term projects...

- Thank you Madam, for existing, since that nosegay that you said you have used to unite so many bouquets of Wisdom, has allowed us to know some valid and sure things in the midst of a growing verbiage. And thank you for the tea, served so strangely...

- Perhaps, in a few years, the only thing that will be remembered about this interview is the way the tea was served.

- H.P.B. laughs and seems in an excellent mood, although I noticed a certain tiredness and her hands, automatically, have returned to her papers.

I give my farewell and get up. It seemed only a few minutes went by.
New visitors are received at the door, since today is Saturday and Madam Blavatsky receives selected visitors, but just as numerous as in the past. I can’t help smiling to myself and thinking that H.P.B., when it comes down to it, will never change... She’s a phenomenon; she knows it and couldn’t care to conceal it.

The sun has started to set and I slowly walk towards the shadows, gripping my notebook like a treasure... which I must memorize in order to compose this interview.

An interview with H. P. Blavatsky, part 1

2009-02-22T15:30:00.000-08:00

In the first weeks of 1991, I found myself in London; I was there to conduct one of my periodical meetings with the principal heads of New Acropolis in England and Ireland, who traveled to that city for that purpose.

On a very cold and rainy “Londonian” morning, I spent my time in one of my regular walking haunts: the “Portobello” fair, with its thousands of antiques, curiosities and crafts. I remembered that we weren’t far from what was the penultimate house, in this world, of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (H.P.B.), where she wrote a large part of her monumental work “The Secret Doctrine”. A taxi left us at the door and that is where the photograph included with this article came from. The address is 17, Lansdowne Road.

Under that cold January drizzle, the neighborhood, now very centralized, although nonetheless a quiet, family one, suggested to me the present article... the chance to have my conscience plunge a century back and visit this house when its illustrious resident was still living there.

That which follows then, is a fiction ... or not, at least not all of it. I’m not sure myself... inasmuch as I’ve learnt that fiction and reality aren’t as separated as we imagine.

In the School of Pythagoras, one of the trials that the aspirant of the first grade - the acousmata -, was to present him, painted on a white panel, three black dots. When asked what it was, only those who answered “three black dots” were accepted, and those who answered that they saw a triangle were disqualified. Relating things together with the imagination, and often simply through fantasy, is not a virtue in many circumstances. The truth is more beautiful and more simple and one doesn’t benefit if it is overly explained.

I therefore leave everyone the liberty to believe what they want to or can believe.

A carriage left me at the very same door of 17 Lansdowne Road; the weather was wonderful and the sun - quite rare in London - shone brightly on all things.

I knew that Madam Blavatsky was expecting me and I realized that I was overly punctual, which is why I took my time in crossing the small porch; I then rang the doorbell, tugging the bronze handle. The door and the facade seemed freshly painted.

A lady, probably a servant, had me enter the tiny hall; I handed her my calling card, and having scarcely disappeared through a side door, she told me that I can go in, since Madam Blavatsky has accepted to see me. And there she was... H.P.B., the myth was seated in a wide working chair, in front of a table that was facing a large and very luminous window; other auxiliary tables, each full of manuscript papers and piles of typewritten sheets, at each side of her. She looked quite like the known photographs of her, but she seemed to me to be more human and cordial, smiling. She was simply dressed and she covered her shoulders with various dark shawls, adorned with fringes, some of which were colored. While continuing to smile, she held out her hand, which was plump yet had very fine and soft fingers. I greeted her and pronounced a few courtesies, explaining why I was here. Her eyes, large and protruding, and of a disquieting gray, looked at me with a curiosity not without mischief. I think that my nervousness, although hidden, amused her. Taking up a worn and thick blue pencil, she asked me if I would have the kindness to wait a little in the large living room, to which she gestured, since she was finishing a phrase from a book that she was writing, to be called “The Secret Doctrine” and which will be much more important than “Isis Unveiled”.

The dwelling was typically Victorian, quite large, and I noticed many small tables and bookcases that were near H.P.B., whose was very ill and with dropsy, which gave her once agile body an abnormal corpulence; she could barely rise from her chair. I saw her from behind, outlined by the light that came in from the window; further back I could see the greens of Holland Park.
I crossed the room trying not to make any noise. The back part contained a variegated collection of books, parchments, rolls of cloth presumably filled with writing, bronzes from India chosen more for their symbolism than for their antiquity or their workmanship, Adoni carpets, wooden platters from Morababad, plaques from Kashmir, Singhalese images, while the floor was covered with fiber rugs from Palghat. Strange figures that I couldn’t recognize, stone fragments, some small fossils, gave everything a strange aspect, with souvenirs taken from far away countries without meaning for the visitor and that would be better suited for the study of an old adventurous lord than that of a lady of the Russian nobility.

I didn’t notice that H.P.B.’s chair could swivel and that she no longer had her back to me, but rather was looking at me, amused, waiting for me to finish my inspection. Apologizing, I approached and sat down on a wooden chair which she pointed to, two meters from her, beside a table that was only partially covered.

While continuing to smile and still looking at me, she offered me a hand-rolled cigarette which I kindly declined. She slipped one between her figures and lit it with a long wooden match. A small cloud of smoke spread around whose smell reminded of the Turkish cigarillos that I knew of.

A feminine figure appeared from the right, dressed in gray and black and approached us very respectfully and whispered something in H.P.B.’s ear.

- “The Countess is wondering if perhaps you might accept some tea...” she suggested.
After having heard her, I felt disturbed and I suddenly stood up, because I didn’t know who this apparent chamber maid was. I accepted and before I could give her the appropriate thanks, with a gracious and light bow, she disappeared to another room.

I once again felt the amused look of H.P.B., who asked me:
-”Do you think that the person who came in was an elemental?”
Her smile took away all hardness that the question may have had. But her gray eyes, the color of snow, very transparent, left a deep impression on me. I couldn’t keep my eyes away from a silver bell, remembering the remarkable phenomena that hovered around H.P.B. consisting in so many remarkable things, among them, the ringing of a bell. Noticing my glance, she explained to me, still amused, that it was only to summon Constance, the Countess, if she needed her. She added that not only is that distinguished lady a good friend and an excellent disciple, not only intrinsically, but that she could also enter into contact with higher Beings, when she is not busy caring and attending her at all hours.

-Madam ... forgive my nervousness ... I have to write an article, but I don’t know how or where to start ... Just thinking that there are here the original manuscripts of the Secret Doctrine, erases all of my questions.

- Now calm yourself and drink your tea ... I will have coffee.

She replied showing me the table on which I had been resting my arm and which now had a complete silverware, on a walnut tray, looking quite heavy, although I didn’t notice anyone putting it there, nor coming into the room. H.P.B. was no longer smiling and drew her coffee towards her. I didn’t want to be indiscreet, so I drank my tea, which was very hot and scented: Ceylon tea.

- In seeing the Countess Constance of Wachtmeister is such a humble attitude, and remembering the many nobles, generals, and academics that you have frequented, it would seem that you have a marked inclination towards those very high social classes; but on the other hand, we know that you have proffered your friendship and help to a great many people of humble condition, especially among the Hindus... Could you tell me something about this?

- Let’s say that I have also read some of the things you have written and although it’s true that what has really evolved through the centuries isn’t Man per se, but rather his machines, his vehicles, his communications; there is something that I would like you to reconsider in order to better understand the XIXth century. I was born in 1832 in a provincial town of Russia, already more than a half a century ago. The period in which I lived in had characteristics which you are not aware of; even in Central Europe more than half of the people were illiterate and very few had pursued higher studies. The socio-economic conditions made it so that, with due exception, being noble and cultivated was forcibly the same thing. Especially with respect to the gentlemen, since for the ladies, all it was asked of us was to know how to speak French, play a musical instrument and to nonchalantly manage a quite complex ceremonial of human relations. As for anything more, having traveled or having a few notions on painting was all that was necessary. Furthermore, the print runs of books weren’t very great, and their costly binding made them, for the most part, inaccessible for those who had to live on a salary. As very few women could go to university, they were obliged to take lessons in their own homes, and the scarcity of public libraries made having private a library in one’s castle, like my aunt’s, a big advantage. Man, believe me, has progressed much, and will continue to progress in the XXth century in that respect, at least in Europe, North America, and the principal cities in the world where you come from; the person who isn’t cultivated is because he doesn’t want to be ... but it wasn’t always like that.

-”You have nonetheless praised the Wisdom and even the Knowledge of many Hindus.”

-”Yes ... In the India of the middle of the middle of the XIXth century the situation was somewhat different, but basically it was the same... The system of castes allowed a Brahman, and also certain Kshatryas, contact with a higher culture. And the sages that I mentioned are old monks that have access to incredible libraries or traditional teachings. My direct masters are princes, since over there, even the physical race, one’s ancestry, influence one’s spiritual development. If you meet a porter who can read Sanskrit, for example, you can be sure that he is a disciple, a “lanoo” on probation, and it’s very likely that, until recently, he has lived in a palace. Furthermore, in my youth, slavery - and not the one regulated by Augustus - was a fact, from the United States of North America to Russia. These people merely survived, and regardless of whether they were happy or unhappy, it’s certain that they had no time nor inclination for the sciences, exoteric or exoteric ... Only beliefs ... superstitions... healing practices...

- But you have been in contact since childhood with these credulous and simple people, even appearing to participate in their convictions. Am I wrong?- Not at all... But what was for them dogmas and fanaticism, strongly tainted with “religious” fear, was for me a motive for study and orientation for my investigations in the Occult.

http://www.upasika.com/docs/livraga/Livraga%20Jorge%20-%20Entrevista%20a%20HPB.pdf

The Invisible Shields of Protection, part 2

2009-02-14T15:56:00.000-08:00

Concrete Mind
Aggressions
· Mental forms of envy, hatred, and jealousy.
· Excessive involvement in finance and money matters.
· Maintaining hidden resentments.
· Losing hours and hours in front of the TV set watching nonsense.
· Everything that has to do with lack of discipline, disorder, or senseless violence.
· Thinking overly of oneself, in an egotistical manner.Giving in to fear.

Defenses
· Positive mental forms. Exercises based on maintaining the mind focused on geometric, spherical, and polyhedric figures.
· Not giving in to hatred, trying to understand the other persons point of view.
· Avoiding excessive material ambitions.
· Keeping an orderly life. Avoid staying up all night and contracting unnecessary debts.Reading about courageous people.

Psychic or Astral
Aggressions
· The mass media in the form of newspapers, magazines, TV and radio.
· “Eroticism”, “sexology” and other topics aimed at degenerates or impotents.
· Living in an unclean, humid and dark environment, where the “larvae” dwell.
· Noisy, strident music.
· Being near “discotheques”, “massage parlors”, and taverns where people shout and drink excessively.
· “Historical hatred” encouraged by opportunists.
· Being near guerrillas, common criminals, and thieves.

Defenses
· The proper use of time spent in healthy reading, walks, concerts, sports, and visiting museums and artistic centers.
· Sexual moderation and periods of absolute chastity.
· Abstaining from getting drunk or intoxicated.
· Avoiding drugs that tear the “Etheric Shield” and give way to all types of illnesses.
· Living in clean surroundings, as esthetic as possible.
· Listening and familiarizing oneself with “classical” music, with poetry.
· Abstaining from seeing a psychiatrist except in cases of illness. Replace this with self-control, a sufficient amount of sleep, and getting used to getting out of bed as soon as one awakes.Having healthy and decent male and female friends.

Vital or Pranic
Aggressions
· Reading and speaking of illnesses without being a doctor.
· Obsessively trying to look younger.
· Poor nutrition, excessively monotonous or with heavy amounts of read meat and seafood.
· Smoking more than 6 cigarettes a day. Drinking alcohol outside of meals. Excessive use of air-conditioning, lacking in necessary ions.
· Never taking in sunlight or exposing oneself to it immeasuredly once a year.
· Using perfumes, varieties of “incense” of poor quality or overly “aromatic”.
· Excessive use of heaters or ventilators close to one’s body.
· Needlessly exposing oneself to all kinds of pollution or fumes.Trying to “magnetize” or hypnotize without knowing how to do it or considering it as some kind of game.

Defenses
· Avoiding speaking of illnesses obsessively.
· When speaking of an illness, avoid touching one’s body or other people’s bodies to point it out.
· Making use of the “Alternative Health Treatments”.
· Chewing often and well one’s food.
· Making sure that the mouth and other orifices of the body are always clean.
· Avoid intoxicating oneself with drugs or tobacco smoke or other varieties that one doesn’t know or know how to control its effects on the etheric body.
· Avoid breathing polluted or recycled air.
· Avoid excessively exposure to the radiation of TV and close proximity to sources of heat and light, except for natural fire.
· Avoid use of clothes, table, and bed that are dirty or if they have been used by others, change the tablecloth or sheets prior to using them.Bathe daily or at least 3 times per week.

Physical
Aggressions
· Straining the body without taking into account one’s age or circumstances, such as the temperature and the altitude.
· Not dressing properly in order “to be in style”.
· Not having medical checkups or blood analysis, etc.
· Loud and strident noises. Unnecessary blows.
· Gluttony. Obesity.All forms of intoxication.

Defenses
· Avoid straining the body unnecessarily or being lazy and not straining it enough.
· Having a medical checkup at least once a year.
· Being properly dressed for every circumstance. This brings a harmony that is not only physical.
· Avoid strident shouting and salty discussions.
· Never leave the table gorged from eating too much. Drink moderately.
· Start the day with a tall glass of mineral water.

The Invisible Shields of Protection - Part 1

2009-02-08T18:26:00.000-08:00

We are living, in these final decades of the XXth century, an era of great insecurity, in which the environment, highly contaminated, has become more aggressive.

Many ask how they can defend themselves, albeit in a basic manner, from these aggressions that are not always strictly physical, seeing as there are also other planes of vibrations in nature that are being distorted by consumerism and atheism.

The traditional books of Esotericism frequently touch upon this topic, but what they are lacking are formulas that can be put into practice right away. Perhaps, due to the acceleration of the times, their “recipes” are inaccessible to the public and do not consider the simple and recent dangers which we have to deal with, in wanting to keep ourselves healthy, not only in body, but also in Soul.

God and nature, which philosophically, we can’t consider to be separate extremes nor opposites, have endowed all creatures with a form of protective “hood” that covers the spiritual plane to the material. But in order for the that armor to be functional, it requires, at the least, putting into practice certain procedures.

The following is a broad outline of these possibilities.

If along with Traditional Esotericism we accept that Nature has 7 fundamental vibratory planes (they in turn, each have 49 sub-planes of vibration), we can create a synthetic table that illustrates the most common aggressions and the possible defenses.

Obviously, the “Table” being illustrated isn’t nor does it pretend to be complete and should be adapted to all the differences in human nature as well as the time in which one lives, always keeping the initiative and making the will have priority over the impermanent flesh.

On top of the physical defenses of the bones and muscles that cover the more important parts of our body, like the brain and the heart, Nature has endowed us with other shields, made of etheric substance, that aren’t normally visible. But they are all fragile if we don’t avoid intoxications and violent persecutions.

The deterioration of those normally invisible shields is not always repairable and cosmic rays as well as elemental and mental forms can filter through the breaches. This can cause the openings to widen and cause illness to the body and the psyche, which can have fatal consequences.

Improvisation in “Practical Occultism” is highly dangerous. Reciting “mantras” and “incensing oneself” with substances that aren’t incense, practicing “spiritualism”, “witchcraft” and “magic” without in fact knowing what one is doing, destroys our natural invisible protections and brings upon us uncontrolled forces that lead to insanity and the most terrible kinds of murder, as this does not stop at the murder of the body.

Nowadays there is an abundance of “Gurus” and “masters” ... but almost all of them are deceivers. A veritable invasion of characters who border on insanity, when they aren’t completely crazy, harass us. An unhealthy “orientalism” - which has nothing more than some external form of the Orient - like saving the expense of buying chairs by offering cushions to sit in “meditation rooms”, that are nothing more than simple lodgings, not always clean and not used only for meditation, seriously hurts the etheric defenses or shields of the unwary.

Only a strong will, a clear mind, a superior culture, a healthy life and the contact with air and free people can preserve our defenses. And understand by “free people” not the libertines but rather those who aren’t enslaved by political or religious sects, that live honorably by their work and are not the slaves of their passions nor the passions of others; generous, good, and infinitely young. People who enjoy sincere laughter and topics that elevate the Soul.

Spiritual Plane
Aggressions
· Ignorance and contempt of everything metaphysical.
· Notions that imagine the spirit as being a mental abstraction of the material plane.
· Anticipative science and “fantascience” that purports to have solutions to the first cause based on chance.

Defenses
· Deepening one’s inner life and outer life in order to rediscover the Occult Sources of Being.
· Giving to the spirit its existential function of the origin of all manifestation. Causality.
· Reading and meditating on the Sacred Books of all Mystical traditions and on the great classic philosophers. Reflecting on the Pure Numbers, free of attributes.

Religious Plane
Aggressions
· Fanaticism of those who believe that their religion unites with God and the others are morally dubious, if not diabolical, imitations.
· Marxism, capitalism, liberalism, and all the doctrines that try to replace the Sacred with what is egotistical, commercial, creating a biological struggle in the manner of beasts.Misinformation that remains anchored in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries.

Defenses
· The comparative study of all religions, separating the evidently divine elements from the human historical deformations.
· Observing minerals, vegetables, animals, and men. Contemplating the wisdom and intelligence of its structures, which evince a Divine Thinker.Praying, having a humility of heart. Not being ashamed to believe in God and speaking of God.

Philosophical Plane
Aggressions
· Confused and hollow terminology.
· Exaltation of badness, ugliness, brutality, wrapped in an existential anguish lacking in the will to search for the Truth.
· False denominations and manipulating the language to make created interests and laziness appear to be current forms of philosophy.Mixing the search for Truth with organic necessities and psychological vices.

Defenses
· Maintaining a clear mind. Simple and pure ideas.
· Praising the just, the good, and the beautiful.
· Doing exercises based on geometrical figures that prevent the mind from falling into pornography and other sick circular ideas.
· Not belonging to any cult or political party.
· Elevating one’s thoughts and putting joy and optimism in all philosophical conceptions.

Original spanish article : Los escudos invisibles de proteccion
http://www.upasika.com/docs/livraga/Livraga%20Jorge%20-%20Escudos%20de%20proteccion.pdf

The seven esoteric paths of spiritual realization

2009-01-23T20:20:00.000-08:00

According to the ancient traditions, there are seven paths of Realization, the seven esoteric paths, also called “The Secret Paths of Realization”. They correspond to what is generally known through books as the seven rays, the seven modalities or forms present in man.

On the historical side, it also corresponds to those seven forms that could be followed to arrive at one’s true vocation, which are the three philosophical forms and the four liberal arts.[1]

According to the ancients, it is related that the septenary constitution is reflected in man and in the Cosmos. Human beings are not only composed of body and soul, the great Antagonists, the good and the bad, but also something more complete. The ancients asserted that man has seven internal vehicles, and from them were born these Seven Paths of Realization.

These seven vehicles are: the physical; the formal, in a higher vibratory state, which penetrates the physical; this is called the luminous, electric, magnetic double, which in reality conforms to the physical, having no form itself; it is the pranic or life part; the emotional, that alters our energetic and physical parts and modifies them, even managing to affect our thoughts, it is our psychic part; the fourth is the concrete mind, the rational mind, present in daily life; the fifth is the higher mind, the abstract, philosophical mind; the sixth is that of illumination, Budhi in Sanskrit, the vehicle that allows to perceive things that cannot be explained, a kind of intuition for wisdom that exists within all men; and in seventh place, the mysterious Spirit, the Soul of Indian thought, the vehicle that has the size of the Gods, the secret friend of the Baghavad Gita, the spectator of all of our actions, the conscience that with or without culture, knows all things, as well as Good and Evil.

The seven paths of realization are reflected through these seven vehicles. Were going to deal with them in reverse, from the top to the bottom. We cannot separate the distinct parts which we are made of. All of them are intermixed within us and are thus inseparable. Man is not a robot that you can plug in and unplug. That’s why we sometimes talk when we are sleeping, that’s why we sometimes sing without knowing why, and that’s why sometimes a tear flows from our eyes without us knowing the reason why we are crying. It is these mysterious combinations of many things that we ignore. We are therefore going to begin with the path of the Will, but always keeping in mind that these are seven abstract paths that are only applicable in practice if they are combined; because a will that has no mind to rationalize it, an emotion to give it color, a life that maintains it and a body that reflects it, is nothing but an invisible phantasm. That will can move absolutely nothing. If the Will is completely abstract, it’s as good as non-existent. It can have Being, but it can’t have existence. It is lacking in the first attribute of Being, which is existence, and philosophically speaking, it is non-existent.

The first path, then, will be the path of the Will

We all know that the Will manifests itself in a kind of inner desire that allows an action to be accomplished. Currently, our will is being threatened by an artificial propaganda that takes advantage of the mass media, among other things, which the plutocracy of those who control large sums of money encourage, and end up tearing away our true inner being. When we ask for something, we generally don’t ask for what we want, but what the publicity makes us want.

Since democracy is in style, when it comes time to vote, we don’t do it out with an inner sentiment, but for what we have read in the pamphlets or for whatever some artificial medium of communication has artificially introduced to us. That will is not our own, rather it has been impressed from outside.

Therefore, we need to invigorate the path of the realization of the Will through the Inner Individual. We aren’t talking about an individualism, of an egoism that separates us from others, but rather to “be who we are”, not out of pride but out of love of Truth. Because neither God nor anyone can take away our individual essence, of being who we are; with our defects, our pettiness’, our inner fears and our doubts, we are nevertheless, each one of us, unrepeatable pieces of Nature. We are different, and we have , precisely in our singularity, a special worth, as if we were little pieces of hand-made craftwork, created by the hand of God, in such a way that we have a particular mark that tells us that we have not come out of any kind of production line.

The second path is that of intuition, of Religiosity

In this one, spiritual enlightenment is fundamental.

Nowadays, , spiritual enlightenment has a lot of connotations. In reality, colors appear because there is light. If the light goes away, everything would be seen in almost the same color. In darkness we would be able to distinguish neither light nor color. It is the light that allows us to see the colors. Without light, we cannot distinguish things.

In the same way, in order to see where the good and the bad is, in order to recognize values, we need spiritual light, we need spirituality, and in simple terms, religiosity. We don’t believe that man differs from animals simply through evolutionary differences, but rather precisely because man can be religious. The most primitive man, the man lost in the woods, in the plains, in the distant mountains, places a stone on top of another and adores the Unknown Being, Creator of the Universe. This man raise his arm and tries to determine the horizon where all things come from. No animal can do this; no animal feels within itself religiosity; for it, religiosity is at the most the love for its loved ones; a wonderful sentiment itself!

As today we live in a world of hatred and terror, as today we live clinging to our wallets so we don’t get it stolen, how nice would a little love be, but not in the common meaning of the word, but rather a profound love. I’m speaking of the kind that, like Jesus Christ said, makes us love others as much as we do ourselves, and in some cases, even more. This would be a sure path of realization.

The third path of realization would be through the Mind

There are some who assert, above all in certain Schools overly influenced by a misunderstood orientalism, that it is not necessary to reason, that there is no need to think.

Socrates was once asked where the dead come from, and he replied from the living. He was later asked where the living came from, and he replied from the dead. If we think about, it will be seen that, whether true or not, from a rational point of view, there’s a certain unbeatable logic.
Syllogistic systems, put together in a correct manner, are necessary for the comprehension of a world that has a logical background. That is where reference is made to the Logos of the world, of its intelligible part. It is from there also that, although the religious books could not use words that the people could not understand, speaking in a simple way they referred to “the Verb”, or “the Word”, which brings all things to life.

Concrete and daily reasoning gives us the possibility of an approximate knowledge, one that we can measure, weigh and compare. An object is old compared to a more modern one, and new when compared to one that is older, or large and small following a similar comparison. Nevertheless, something cannot be old and new at the same time, or large and small at once, and this is precisely using another way to understand the world and to understand ourselves, to know where the truth lies; through daily life things blind us, by their lack of real qualities. Hence the third path is an eminently philosophical one, in the classical manner, of the Pure or Abstract mind.

The fourth path is one of realization through the Concrete Mind

This is the capacity we have to assemble and unite material, manifested things. We can make a series of calculations, estimations, and thanks to this, we can do business, write books, converse, based on a comprehension of where we have come from. Memory allows us to record things and gives us that small awareness of knowing who we are. That is the fourth path of realization.
The fifth path is that of the emotions

I once knew an old Hindu philosopher many years ago, who told me that you can’t kill a base emotion, an instinct, with reason alone, rather it has to be transmuted, and in some way, converted into an elevated emotion. Hence, we can elevate our emotions. We don’t have to emote solely over a dish or a good bottle of wine, it is also necessary to be able to have an emotional response to Wagner, to a painting, to a piece of sculpture, to the Parthenon or the Pyramids. It can even happen that we sometimes cry in the middle of the night, thinking about those who are hungry or cold, those who are afraid.

Emotions should be like trees. They should lift themselves up vertically and open themselves towards the sky, opening themselves in numerous hands like the branches of trees, where there are birds that sing and nests that promise new Springtimes. This is the fifth path of realization: through emotions, high emotions that are felt in the presence of a work of Art or our loved ones. We must uplift our souls, uplift our anima, to feel emotion not only for the lower things, but also for the higher things.

All trees need roots, but the roots are justified by the vertical trunk and the branches. If a tree doesn’t have a vertical trunk and branches and birds, and fruits and flowers, what use would it be? A tree would nothing but a piece of material submerged in the ground; and we are tired of having nothing but pieces of material hidden in the ground. We want to uplift our emotions. We want to return to feeling emotion with friendship, with love, with heroism, with loyalty. We want sentiments of truth, in the platonic style, which are capable of giving everything and asking for nothing. That would be the fifth path.

The sixth path of spiritual realization is the one that comes from our vital part

From the simple observation of Life we can perceive everything that God has given us on this earth.

If we look closely, if we look how a fish is designed, how the birds fly, their “V” formations that have been applied to airplanes and that birds, for millions of years, have used because it cuts the wind better, we shall understand the wisdom that Life contains.

Before the physicians discovered capillarity, Life made the sap flow from the trunks of trees, and through the stems of roses, allowing us to have flowers and perfumes. Life is what make children laugh and what puts peace in the eyes of elders, because they know, those who are wise, that life has no beginning nor ending, rather it continues, beyond death, and it was also there before our birth.

This is the sixth path of realization, which through the observation of Life, as well as the accomplishment of its laws with rectitude, cleanliness, and order, without hurting others, carries us to our goal.

I also remember that that old philosopher taught me that the happiness of one should never be based on the unhappiness of another. Nonetheless, this is the most current form. We should arrive at a kind of happiness that is good for everyone, like when we listen to Music, what one feels does not take away one bit of the happiness of one’s companions.

By spiritualizing ourselves, observing these roots of Life, we can share. In the material plane, from a piece a bread, we can only share crumbs amongst ourselves, but on the spiritual plane we share more easily and everyone can get a full mouthful. When we listen to a piece of music together, it has a stronger effect. That is why we go to the Opera or the Theater, because there we have companions of spiritual adventure.

This is the ‘Life” that we propose as a path of realization.

Finally, the last, and at the same time the first of the paths of realization, the physical path.

The physical path is the simplest and perhaps the most difficult of all, especially in this historical moment.

Every people and every person has always thought that they were living in a special moment of History; however, we really are living in a special moment of History; we are in an historical crossroads, faced with the probable advent of a new Middle Age, seeing that the systems that govern us today are non-functional.

We need a great renovation, a profound change, so that all this can continue advancing. And it will advance, because Humanity has risen a thousand times from much worse catastrophes; but we need to return to our own roots, to things as they really are. We need to get away from the consumer mentality of the assembly lines. We need to get back to doing things with our hands, to again experience the feel of stone and wood, and to again feel the water on our skin. We need to return to Nature, and to do it in a true manner. We don’t return to Nature in a rubber boat at 30 km/hour, but rather by trying to truly live with Nature. Neither do we return by abstaining from meat, as some pseudo-esotericists say, thinking that by doing that they are liberated; cows don’t eat meat either. Liberation must be something more complete than all of that. What we need to do is to “live naturally”. In Nature, there is good and bad, light and darkness; things are defined. Therefore we know we can depend on it. The shipwrecked person who is among the waves and sees an object in the darkness, doesn’t know if it’s a life preserver or a piece of rotten wood that will fall apart when touching it, and so is scared. We, shipwrecked people of the old civilizations, of the old beliefs, of the old feeling of Honor, need to know what we can rely on, things of the physical world included, in order to know if something is solid or not, to know if something can be used to lean on or not.

We cannot take one path, or another, or another. We must unite them all, because man is a synthesis. Nobody should be so vain as to think that he is a spark of Will. Neither should anybody be so humble as to think that they are only a mass of flesh. Neither one extreme nor the other; we are the one and the other, as well as things that we don’t know of, as all things are.
Within us we find the body, life, emotions, thoughts, intuitions - those strange voices that speak to us at night - ; there is also the Soul, the Spirit, That which animates us, that which is immortal, that is beyond all things, and which in times of failure tell us, like Christ to Lazarus: “Get up and walk”.

In this unjust world, where there is exploitation, where there is fear, where there is violence, we must raise again our spiritual banners without fear. Nobody can do us harm. Nobody can die. We are all divinely immortal, and so we have to march through the adversities as if they where steps that we use to climb higher, to go further. Let nobody deny their own Being, let nobody deny their own banner, let nobody deny the fact of being human. Upward and onward always!

[1] [Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric; Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy, respectively. (Transl.)]

Translated from 'Los siete Csminos para la realizacion espiritual'
http://www.upasika.com/docs/livraga/Livraga%20Jorge%20-%20Siete%20caminos.pdf

How Dreams become Reality, Part 2

2008-12-29T12:35:00.000-08:00

That is where or dreams live, our archetypes, and we will realize them one day or another. That is where that which illuminated the imaginary character of Quixote, who according to the legend lived mad and died sane. Perhaps it was the opposite: he lived sane and died mad. Because there’s no worse madness than that of attaching importance to things of the flesh and to the things that are apparently reasonable.

Perhaps there is no greater wisdom nor greater approach to truth than to know how to dream things deeply and forcefully, to know how to unite our hearts, how to sing, speak, be together: to be able to live deeply and strongly. But it’s not a matter of dreaming like those Japanese or Chinese statues, pot-bellied, with their faces pointing to the sky.

We must dream with force, until tears come to our eyes, clenching our teeth until we feel the taste of blood in our mouth. We must dream with our muscles flexed and our eyes closed.

We must be all will striving towards that dream that we are pursuing. We must have that inner strength that is what really differentiates us from animals, that inner strength that allows us to imagine, to project, to create.

If the entire world would collapse today, if we lost our art, our science, our philosophy, our literature, if our cities and roads disappeared, if everything was destroyed, it would only take one couple to survive for the whole world to be repopulated. There would be new libraries, new poems; children would be reborn. Paintings, monuments and pyramids would be created anew, because man carries within himself the archetypes of the whole of humanity.

Each one of is the reflection, in one way or another, of all the men that exist on the Earth. Each one of us carries inside the dreams of every man, those who have lived as well as those to come.

Each one of us has within themselves a truly unsuspected potential and we must be tenacious. It is not easy to accomplish our dreams. It’s even very difficult. But we must learn to be tenacious. We must be able to make the effort to accomplish our ideals, year after year, month after month, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute.

If we don’t have any, we can follow someone else’s ideal, but we shouldn't remain without an ideal. We don’t have stars in our hands, and yet we have learnt to guide our ships by the stars that shine in the sky. We don’t have sources of water in our breast, and yet we have learnt to drink from the source of mountains.

In the same way, if we don’t have any dreams, let’s learn how to follow an ideal, something that keeps us upright, and guides us on higher. Our exterior appearance is not enough to make us human: our humanity must come from the inside as well.

But if we are really men, as the Acropolis would have it, and as would Philosophy and Nature which are in every man, then we need to stand on our own two feet. And in our humility, we can sometimes say, kneeling before God: “I am a Man, I have dreams, I hear strange voices in me; at night, I listen to words that I don’t understand, poems and even desires. I am not a machine or a robot; I am much more, because I am a human being, and I can correct what I do; I can correct myself, improve myself. I can dream of something that is higher than me. I am not a programmed entity, I am a part of creation. In this way, we can dream of a New Man, one that doesn’t have our limitations. A New Man who, by being born a poet, can write verses. A New Man who, by being born a musician can compose melodies.

A New Man who can live ecologically, that is, not against nature, but in harmony with it, purified on the inside and the outside. A New Man that doesn’t know fear, hatred, spite.

In this obscure moment of History, in a full-blown crisis and in the middle of the collapse of all values, in the middle of the hesitations and doubts, we have dared to dream of a New Man who will be able to live in our cities without dirtying them. A New Man who will be able to use our metals to make things other than weapons. A New Man who will be able to use our papers while ignoring pornography.

A New Man with integrity. A New Man who cannot be bought, even with all the gold in the world, nor be crushed by all the lead in the universe. A Man who will be truly conscious of his immortality and that of others. A Man who will know that being a man is not being an empty and broken skeleton, but much more than that, who will know that being a Man, is being a beacon, a light in the night.

Our path is arid and hardly softened by tender dawns, but while walking in the obscurity, enlightened from time to time by the celestial phenomena, we will finally meet this man who will be New and Better than everything we have dreamt of. And we will be able to have our dreams descend. Our hands filled with seeds will receive the white dove of inspiration! And there will again be Homers who will sing, the genies of art will return. We will once again be proud to be MEN.

This accomplishing of ideals, small and great, like that of dreaming of a New Man, is nothing other than the philosophical “mechanism” that allows that realization of dreams.

Each one of us in a certain way is a dream. In a certain manner, you have dreamt me and I have dreamt you. We have all mutually dreamt each other, and we have met.

In that world of dream and illusions, let’s know what we are in reality: a silk thread, a ray of light that passes on the horizon. We are men, philosophers, we are the seeds of the New Man. We are that incoercible force that wants to do what I have repeated so many times and I say it to you again today, to do what Cervantes expresses in his Don Quixote: change the giants into windmills, and not the windmills into giants. Let us remember the moment where Don Quixote is going to attack the windmills while asserting that they are monstrous ogres and giants. And Sancho says to him: “Watch out, Master, they’re Windmills”. And the knight replies: “No, they’re ogres, they’re our enemies, let’s attack them!” He charges, lance in hand, and falls to the ground with his faithful Rosinante. Sancho then says to him: “Didn’t I tell you, Master, that they were windmills?” To which Don Quixote answers: “Didn’t I tell you, Sancho, that only Chivalry teaches certain things, and those who don’t know Chivalry don’t understand that there are giants, who when attacked, transform themselves into windmills?” This, we must learn, feel it and conserve it like the nails on each of our fingers. We must keep it in our heart and in our head. In each letter that we write, in each word that we formulate, in each moment that we are in contact with another human being; and even when we are alone, let’s always remember that we must maintain the dignity of the Human Being, that behind us, there are thousands and thousands of years of history, and ahead of us, millions of years that will come to pass.

We are but a link in the chain: we have the historical responsibility to raise the old seeds towards the New World, and to dig the furrows in the New Earth. Let’s have the necessary strength to get up in the morning, “renewed”. And no matter what we do, what we are, let’s be sure to do it in the philosophical manner.

Let’s make sure to fulfill our commitment in the best manner. Let’s always be alert, attentive. Let’s try to always be in contact with the world that, after death, is waiting to receive us, wonderfully illuminated and in the peace of duties than have been accomplished.

How dreams become reality, Part I

2008-12-14T18:33:00.000-08:00

For those who are reading me for the first time, I’d like to say that my articles are attempts at reflections, at reaching out, at expressing certain thoughts. I’d like to point out that we use this form to guide us because we believe that everyone is inherently a philosopher, that is, ‘we are all philosophers’; and I believe that there aren’t any universities that can make philosophers; they can recognize a body of technical knowledge with a diploma, but no university can create philosophers, any more than they can create poets or musicians. Man carries that preoccupation within himself. Man is ‘filo-sofos’, that is a ‘lover of wisdom’, a lover of the essence of things.

This philosopher resides in all of us. It’s just a matter, as Socrates would say, of finding ourselves. Seeking within ourselves in order to re-discover ourselves, to see ourselves in that magic mirror of our new face, our inner face, our deeper face.

Starting from that inner face, we will develop the theme of this article, ‘How do dreams become reality?’ We are going to refer not to the physical sense of the state of sleep or awakening, but rather I'll be talking about how to realize one’s dreams; dreams in the sense of illusions and archetypes, that is, the ones that go beyond physical things.

Evidently there exists a law of gravity that makes water flow from a mountain to the sea. But that law of gravity, which is a mechanical truth, must have like all things, above it, a “being”. This “being”, as Calderon de la Barca would say, is the dream that dreamt the river.

The river is a river and flows because it dreams that it is flowing. The birds, in a sense, dream that they are birds and we are all, in one way or other, who we have dreamt ourselves to be. We all have inside of us a number of dreams, that may be artistic, family-oriented, financial, social, political, etc. Everyone has dreams. Sometimes we think that, because a person behaves in a certain way, is dressed in a certain way, or has a certain aspect, that it is impossible for them to dream. We all, in one way or another, have the capacity to dream.

We are all in contact, in some form or another, with that inner world where the archetypes live, where the dreams are.

Everyone, at some time of our life, in our humility, in our introspection, we have all felt the humming of the great wings of a dream. There are mysterious voices that dictate poems to us, that we may never write because we are too timid to do it...

We hear strange music, that we cannot reproduce because we don’t play any instrument or because we no nothing of music. We sometimes imagine how to do certain things, without ever accomplishing them due to lack of financial means.

A world of archetypes exist within us, an ancestral call towards Perfection, towards the Good, towards Concord, towards Love. It is a powerful call that never leaves us; a call that never ages, no matter how we old are, a call that can’t be brushed away... this call continues within us…. continues…continues….continues…..

How does the dream become reality? Let’s refer ourselves to a little diagram. On various occasions, we have mentioned that Nature can be divided into seven planes, as there are seven days in a week, seven basic notes of music, seven basic colors, etc. There is a sevenfold system that governs the manifested world that we know. The realization of dreams is also governed by this number seven. There is a plane, a dimension of the will were things are chemically pure. Schopenhauer spoke of will as “pure impulses”, that exist above all appearances, and that from time to time provoke similar phenomena.

Neither death nor decay touches this world of archetypes, nor any form of decadence, such as we know of today.

Then there is the world of intuition: the subject and the object are in direct contact; we can grasp things directly, without intermediaries. Let’s take an example: if someone travels to Greece and sees the Parthenon, he will admire it, although he is neither an architect nor an archaeologist.

Thus, each of us could tell if an object is beautiful or not. Sometimes we don’t share the same opinion, our canons of beauty differ. But to say if something is beautiful or ugly, we don’t need any explanations. There is a kind of inexorable judge in us that enables us to find the beauty or ugliness in all things.

There is a third plane, that of the intellect. It is the one that, according to the Greek philosophers, allow us to understand things in all their depth. The word itself indicates it: intellect, the power to understand things, to grasp the hidden skeleton. Next comes the world of reason and desires. This world, so different from the three preceding ones, make us enter into the eternal duality. We have a dualistic mind. In order to have knowledge of something through the mind, we proceed by comparison, deduction, speculation, etc. It is that reason that pushes us to know things, to evaluate the time they last, what they cost us, etc. This reason has a thirst for winning, losing, calculating...

After that comes the psychical world were all the dreams that come from our imagination, our fantasy are. This world completely transforms our being in regard to others.

Certain people are not physically attractive, and yet, they emit a certain charm that attracts us. On the other hand, other people who are well dressed and physically appealing give us a bad impression, we don’t find them appealing. And we often wonder why some people who appear good and honorable, somehow rub us the wrong way.

This psychical world, related to the intuitive world, crowns another lower world: that of vitality. All things possess a vitality, an energy that animates them, that allow them to manifest themselves. After this, comes the plane of physical manifestation.

And so how are dreams manifested? There exists an archetypal world. For example how much is two plus two? Four. But four of what? We need to clarify. There is a superior and abstract world that is beyond the attributes of color, form, size, etc. It is in this world that dreams are located, that little by little, become more concrete until they are manifested. But according to the classical philosophers, dreams are not the product of man, but antedate him. Dreams, as archetypes, have existed since the beginning of things. This means that a prior natural structure exists beyond what we are able to perceive. We say today that there are seven musical notes, we have divided our weeks into seven days following the planets and time, etc., but all of this was already in the very constitution of the Cosmos. In the same way, dreams live and exist, like fantasmagoric friends, strange beings that never abandon us. They live in their archetypal world, they’re like big elves, Knights, Ladies, colored lights, strange and unknown voices, music that we have never heard, languages that we have never spoken.

It is in that sort of Pandora’s box, where hope never escapes and where all our dreams are kept. These dreams that take shape little by little.

How do they take shape? They become reality by accomplishing them step by step. What is the first thing we do when we build a house, for example? First of all, we set out to do it; it’s that act of will that intervenes. Later we think that we would like a window with four bars and two flowerpots, with a pine and a dog, etc. That is something we feel, intuitively in a certain way, that’s our archetype. Your dream is already descending, it is “incarnating”. Then comes the phase of understanding the dream: How do you conceive that house? In the form of a tower, square, high, low, large? Thus, you begin to think your house. Soon the other part comes: what is the cost per square meter, and the cost for cement, and bricks, etc… etc…? We begin to put into play reason and desire.

After having “reasoned out” the dream, we begin to desire it psychically, by giving it an increasing amount of attention, we give it a vitality that continues to grow. That is life, you have given life to your dreams.

It might be that we think that there are dreams that aren’t very easy to realize, but that’s a topic that could drag us into long debates. New elements may indeed intervene and hinder the accomplishment of a dream. Sometimes it’s the dreams of others that limit our own.

Sometimes there are factors that hold us back and make it so our dreams cannot be achieved as we would like them to. But for that, we must exercise our will, our self-mastery, and we must also know how to desire things. It’s not sufficient to think about them, we must know how to desire them. I can talk about this based on my personal experience, because I desired and dreamt New Acropolis. And, after having founded it, I notice with pride that the Acropolis exists in thirty countries. When I dreamt of it, when I accomplished it, 24 years ago, I was very far from here, and practically without resources to do it. I know what’s it like to spend nights in front of a copier printing sheet after sheet, and later going out into the street with a bag putting up posters one wall at a time. And later, waiting for people to arrive to present the lecture to.

We need to have will power, to have faith in ourselves and be able to connect ourselves to that spiritual world, that great spiritual reserve where will, intuition and intellect co-exist.

http://www.nuevaacropolismalaga.org/archives/como_se_plasman_los_suenos000031.php

Esotericism and religion

2008-12-07T16:01:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, so many words have been so manipulated that the original concepts, the true ones, have become contaminated with the mental and emotional pollution of each historical moment. The period in which we are living does not escape this bias, but rather, comprehension and spiritual aptitudes being deformed by the weight of materialism, the current images have become confused and frequently sterile, when not harmful.

Esotericism is therefore commonly understood as being a senseless mixture of morbid practices that the marginals of society and the mentally challenged partake in, and who, having renounced their condition of human beings, have regressed to an instinctive life, aided in their abject fall by drugs and stupefying operations of lunatics and tyrants, alien to any ethical and esthetic norm.
In the best of cases they think that the esotericist is a compiler of superstitions and false beliefs that have accumulated through the centuries. Esotericism is understood as everything that, with serious risk to the health of body and soul, distances human beings from the good and the just, precipitating them into absurd and criminal beliefs.

It is something that dissolves, then, all that is culture and civilization.

It’s a dark and hidden cancer that eats away at individuals and collectivities. It’s something that is by far the antithesis of all that is authentically religious.

No better trick has Religion, in its various forms and colors, managed to pass off.

Nobody who considers themselves “on the vanguard” accepts Religion as anything else than “the opium of the people”, constantly at odds with Science, and adapting itself like a repugnant chameleon to the discoveries and observations of reason and experience.

They see it as a comfort for cowards, who fear the obvious characteristics of death and life. The authentically religious are seen as frustrated and impotent simpletons who search for lies that compensate the inevitable pains of existence.

Our consumer society accepts as normal that cinemas and supermarkets are open until late hours of the night, as well as bars and houses of ill-repute, while churches, synagogues and mosques open their doors for only a few hours a day.

On the other hand, the religious see the esotericists as their deadliest enemies and vice-versa. They therefore before become easy game for atheists and materialists who, by taking up one position or another, infiltrate and interchange their charges that demolish faith in God, in the immortal soul and everything that, from longstanding tradition, supercedes their myths that place man at the peak of animal evolution, that is, making him the most animal of all.

To the disgrace of one and the other, the ones who call themselves “Esotericists” as well as the ones who call themselves “Religious” have given and continue to give a denigrating example.
The first corresponds to all types of degrading “cults” which crush the human condition, and including in their historical baggage necromantic exercises, witchcraft and charms that lead to insanity and death for innumerable believers, from kings to beggars.

The second, making a spectacle with an irrational and exclusive fanaticism that constitutes the major “spiritual racism”. Its past is sadly illuminated with the bonfires of all inquisitions, and in the sacred name of God they have committed more crimes and infamies than our annals are able to assemble. The elements of torture used against the “impious” and its persecutions, surpass the fantasies of horror novels.

Yet we must ask ourselves, without ignoring the inherent faults of all mortals: Is that Esotericism? Is that Religion?

Are they the same thing? What do they have in common?

And if not, then what is the difference?

In the light of Philosophy, which alone seeks the truth and has no elders, we can answer these questions.

Many years ago, when the author of this article was in his early youth, and had discovered through Classical Philosophy, the Fountains of Life and its expressions, he opened the door of his house to a predicator of a religious form that I won’t mention. He showed me a book and told me, sententiously, that it contains all the truth, and not only that, but that God is only in that book . He was basing himself, evidently, on a principle of faith, of an unshakable credulity. He quoted some parables and teachings to me. I listened to him respectfully and told him, in turn, that what he was offering is not new for me, since in other books and through other historical persons, more or less the same thing has been said since the beginning of history. He became scandalized. He threatened me with eternal damnation... and he insisted so much that, with juvenile impatience I asked him if God was Omnipotent and Omnipresent. He answered that he was. I therefore asked him if God was in the chairs that we are sitting on. Alarmed at my boldness, he replied in the negative. In the light of the most elementary logic, I told him if God was not in the chairs, you are limiting God and in which case God would not then, be omnipotent..., that I conceive of an omnipotent and omnipresent God who can be in a chair as well as in a book, in a workshop as well as in an altar. I remember the stupefied look on his face; maybe no one ever presented him with that problem through repetition of the same refrain day after day, he mumbled a few irritated words, got up, and left. Today, I would have left him with his faith, since we must never take away someone’s support, as ridiculous as it may be, without offering them a more solid one to sustain them, or better yet, teach them to walk without crutches. But there are those who can walk by themselves and those who need canes or walkers. I learnt that later on.

My anecdote, in a certain way, has been in part spontaneous and in part premeditated.

The negative opinions that the majority of “civilized” people have about Esotericism and Religion is based on ignorance, since they have never given the subject any serious thought.

Seeing as we don’t condemn Science for having created atomic bombs, neither should we condemn Esotericism based on what we know or think we know about cults, nor should we condemn Religion, based on the human sins committed that we know of or think we know of, by its members.

Man, since his most remote past, has been differentiated from the animals not so much for his intelligence nor his goodness, but rather for the possibility of perceiving in some way the presence of God and the invisible beings that are perceptible to our more subtle senses, in special circumstances. The first thing that the man of the “Stone age”, a primitive or a remnant of forgotten civilizations, built, along with instruments of work and death, were also altars and paintings of a metaphysical, magical purpose; without being any the less useful to them; they encouraged a good hunt and the protection of natural forces, that they intuitively perceived as expressions of Spirits of Nature.

According to all the traditions, superior men or Beings with human appearance - which we don’t have to necessarily suppose came in a spaceship - taught them agriculture and farming, they gave them astronomical and astrological knowledge, techniques and expressions both spoken and written, symbols and norms of hygiene, medicines and ways to cross rivers, canyons, and mountains.

That knowledge, and much more, was transmitted by word of mouth, being considering secret, since their improper use could do more harm than good. This can only be applied amongst a few men who have securely overcome or controlled their instincts. Heirs to the “Magna Sciencia”, Magic, they were the first esoterists.

There have been other men who, hampered by the necessities of the time and space that where different from those who were initially nomadic, gathered from these secret teachings only the external reflections, and they had to constantly adapt it to changes in time and place. Those were the religious. In intimate contact with the people, they had to paint for those who lived near the poles, a frozen hell and a warm paradise; and for the torrid or temperate zones, a burning hell and a cool and mild paradise, seated on white clouds.

In the beginning, these religions, possessors of authentic and secret elements, in intimate contact with the esotericists, gave their peoples a simplistic comfort geared to their level of understanding, conscious that the were giving them examples which where more or less infantile; legends and parables, in order to encourage a better understanding and a better practice of virtues, indispensable for spiritual and material progress. Later, like in the myth of the Tower of Babel, the religious began to disregard each other and to fight each other ferociously. The piety of God therefore allowed it so that periodically, a Messiah, Avatar, Savior or whatever you want to call them would incarnate among them in order to redirect them towards the truth, promoting reforms that generally would receive at the time but the repudiation of the stagnant religious and their people.

The esotericist maintained, thanks to secrecy and the many guarantees that the “Initiates” required, a unique teaching and line of conduct throughout the millennium. It was and is the same in Asia as in Europe, in Africa as well as in America.

The religious adapted themselves, for the benefit of the people, and although without taking away from the basic truths, the Teachings were pacifist with the Buddha, militant with Christ and martial with Mohammed.

The very words “esoteric” and “exoteric” - the latter term can be applied to the religious - give us, by looking at their Greek roots, their meaning. “Esoteric” is the internal and “exoteric” is the external”.

They are therefore not the same yet neither are they opposites, but are rather complementary, like the axle of a car that rotates upon itself, and the large wheels that travel the dusty roads in great strides. The rim of the wheel sometimes gets covered with mud or water. The axle always remains in the same place in respect to the ground. A wheel without an axle would be a lost artifact, and an axle without a wheel a useless abstraction.

All the great religious masters had their direct disciples to whom they transmitted the truth that They possessed, and others more distant from the knowledge of the Sacred Things, although not from their hearts, who followed on the basis of remarkable phenomenon and clear narrations, easy to understand and at the same time sufficiently attractive for them to be remembered.
All the true esotericists have a nucleus of Disciples to whom they transmit the Ancient Teachings, so that they can in turn promote the arts and sciences, philosophy, politics and those same religions.

Like all manifested things, some have deviated and become corrupted more than once, giving origin to confrontations, persecutions, cults and inquisitions. But this inevitable evil should not get mixed up with all the good that has been conserved, in the esoteric and mysteric as well as the religious. The error is not that of the Masters; the error is that of men and this is magnificently symbolized in the “last supper” of Christ, with the traitor Judas clinging to his bag of money.

Confusing and putting Religion and Esotericism in the same bag is a serious error. Religions come and go, and today thousands of tourists walk through the remains of the Egyptian temples inquiring into the characteristics and names of the theological representations that, thousands of years ago, were familiar to even the most simple country folk. The inner spirit that fueled the Mysteries in Egypt has not been lost and has helped give rise to many other cultures and civilizations.

I know that if some fervent believer of any religion reads theses pages, they will say to themselves: “My religion is the truth; the others have fallen because they were false, mine will prevail” ... But that is a childish argument ... which may have also been made by other men who believed in the religion of Osiris, of Ishthar, of Quetzalcoatl, of Naymlap. Today the visitors of museums look at those images and ask: who are they?

This does not take away from the value of religion as a bridge between men and the Deity; it’s simply necessary to differentiate the labels from the bottle and the bottle from its contents.
The amalgamation of the Religious Masters and the Esoteric Philosophers that is so much in vogue is artificial and another example of the contamination and confusion that reigns. There are however people who ask: Weren’t Buddha and Moses Initiates? Evidently, in some way yes ... but on the other hand, ... in some ways, a Raymund Lully or a Paracelsus were religious and mystics. Nothing is absolutely separated in this Universe which has Unity, which is God, beyond all the forms. But as long as time lasts, the apple will continue to be an apple and the rose, a rose. And everything fits in harmoniously in the Garden cultivated by the hands of God.
It would be very nice if everyone understood this and, without denying their form of faith or path to knowledge of the Sacred Things, could focus more on living them than criticizing them ... and stopped, as Christ has recommended, seeing the mote in the eye of others without seeing the beam in our own.

Translated from 'Esoterism y Religion'

The presence of God

2008-11-30T16:33:00.000-08:00

More objective than all the theological and scientific theories is the fact that man, since his most remote origins, has considered himself and his material surroundings as something ephemeral, changing and transitory. The mutations of beings and things made him realize the evidence that death inexorably follows every birth, but also that every one of them must have a justification, a meaning, a reason.

He saw that herds moved in search of water and food: the rivers flowed to the sea, fire inexorably rises to the sky. And from all these things he deduced (or mysterious voices spoke in his ears) that also he and all living beings are heading towards somewhere that is beyond the immediate surroundings. Millions of years before Aristotle, metaphysics was born.

With the teachings of his spiritual guides and the observation of the cycles that are manifested in nature, man gained the certainty that nothing disappears definitively and completely, everything returns and is reborn. Thus he considered his body to be his house: an impermanent dwelling that has to be replaced from time to time, through old age or through damage, it being no longer useful. He discovered his own immortality and his renewed presence on the stage of the world. He also discovered that the places of the living and the dead are separated, but by a wall that is very thin, through which one can hear and can even see.

An insubstantial universe, but tremendously real, opened before his feelings and his intelligence. And along with farming implements, he carved amulets and raised altars that, like magic stairs, allowed the inner man, that is above suffering and joy, to appear, in a world where the herds of animals were immense and the hunting was never exhausted, where the trees never fell down... Behind the changing planetary sky, they discovered the stars. The everlasting elements became evident. By linking them together, they conceived the first geometrical figures, pure and stable; they intuitively perceived the Archetypes, that aren’t subject to time, and that regulate space.
They found themselves between a terrestrial world and a celestial world, ascending and descending from one to the other, crossing the invisible bridge of reincarnations which, in almost every case, has been associated with the rainbow with its seven colors.

They admired the creatures that could breath under water, those that could fly higher than the mountains, and the trees that preserved the personal seals of their dead forefathers in their bark. They meditated on the raging will of a falling rock and on the silent surging of a green miracle in each planted seed, and they associated the latter with the fertility of women and the renewed hope that children represent.

When he had to give a definite form to his house, he installed one or more columns that could be cut from the forest, that is, tree trunks. Hunted animals not only gave them food but also skins and leather to cover themselves and make the long walks less painful. From quarries and mountains they extracted the material for the points of their weapons, and also chisels with which they could give useful forms to things. With fishbones they made hooks that provided them with more fish. The fixed stars allowed them to orient themselves at night , enabling them to happily return to their familial group. By heating certain stones with fire, they distilled an incandescent liquid that, once hardened and deposited in clay containers, allowed man to discover metallurgy, hundreds of thousands of years before the time that the current specialists believe to have been- these of the same “race” of those who, in scientific congresses of the last century, affirmed that the cave of Altamira had been painted by a Frenchman.

He understood that he was more than his body, and because of that, when he died, he destroyed it; through fire or burial in the ground, wrapped up in the form of a mummy or ritually dismembered. It was the observation of the esoteric knowledge of his own survival, and of the liberation of the heaviest and most fastidious of his vehicles. The law of cycles will cause him to return to earth; but, as time passed, he preferred to ignore or leave that knowledge for the spiritually strongest: his sacerdotes, mages and initiate-kings. And so, as time went by, the respective “exoteric” and “esoteric” streams were separated.

But they all had something in common... That something is so evident that only the most ignorant in the most ignorant moment of history could deny: THE PRESENCE OF GOD. This thing that we call a presence, is immanent in all things and all beings. In truth, man achieves true differentiation from animals when he becomes sure of the existence of God, mysteriously inserted in his own participation of Nature - Divinity. For our ancestors, there was no dichotomy nor contradiction between the body and the soul. Everything was one and multiple at the same time, infinitely rich in forms, characteristics and sizes.

And so as we picture a hand, saying that it is “one”, and as we imagine fingers saying that they are “five”, so the perception of the one and the multiple depends on the criteria with which it is contemplated. Man was the receptacle of an instruction that allowed him to perceive unity and multiplicity, destiny and liberty, obedience and creation.

Today, at the end of this conflictual XXth century that has had the virtue of teaching us that we know very little and that we often make mistakes, the “positivist” affirmations of the XIXth century appear funny to us, with its “scientific” superstitions and its infantile, not to say simian, atheism. Perhaps the only evidence, that is equal for the learned as for the ignorant, is that “Something” that we call God who gave the will of survival to things, love to beings and a portentiously intelligent plan to bodies and life in all things.

“Causality” could never have painted the eyes of an owl on the wings of nocturnal butterflies to scare off their enemies, designed the double aspirating-expelling valve of a heart, nor program the maintenance of “micro-climates” in caverns by way of alterations in the temperature and adjustments in the concentration of certain gases in suspension in the air. This “Something” saw to it that anaerobic bacteria could survive without air and to the procession of the equinoxes. It ordered the collective intelligences that direct the herds (the “groupal souls” of the esoterists), and the invisible shields that protect the surface of the planet from cosmic radioactivity. From the dangerous ray comes the beneficial ozone, and from the terrible waves that are beating on the highest places, comes the indispensable negative ions. There are many and many of these manifestations.. but behind it all, beyond it and within there is THE PRESENCE OF GOD.

Why then, are there so many atheists?

In truth, there aren’t as many atheists as is commonly believed. As we cannot assume that the entire population of an “officially” catholic country go to church every week and believe in heaven and hell, as illustrated in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, or in the infallibility of the Pope, neither should we consider it certain that all the millions who live in the USSR, for example, are atheists.

Moreover, to not be a strict “practicing” member of a determined religion doesn’t mean that one doesn’t believe, feel and understand that presence that we call God. It is good to reflect on this, since there are many people who believe in God and pray with their work, with the moral rectitude of their lives, with their honor and generosity...And they fervently believe that there exists a “great beyond” and a “Something” that justifies all its forces and the very motion of the Galaxy.

If there is only one God, why are there so many religions?

Of all communisms, “spiritual communism” is the most dangerous. As a single stroke of a pool cue moves several balls, God’s unique presence, being so diversified and acting on so many different beings, causes many religious forms to arise, very different in terms of superficial rituals, but very similar, if not identical, in its essence.

Moreover, different times and places have given rise to varied theological symbolisms. The presence of God could not manifest itself in the same way in Sumer of 5,000 years ago than in India of 2,500 years ago, or in Arabia of 1,300 years ago. The geopolitical, economical and social differences do not allow for a unique expression.

Furthermore, it depends on who is receiving a specific teaching. They say that Gengis Khan, in the XIIIth century, embarrassed his Muslim councilor when, asking him if Allah was in all things, he couldn’t give him a reason why instead of saluting the Mecca, he couldn’t salute the behind of his camel. It seems that the councilor wasn’t very skilled, since he could have explained that Muslims give a salutation to the Mecca not only for God, but also for the mytho-historical event related to Mohammed.

Believing that there is only one true religion has caused rivers of blood to flow in the worst of “racisms”: spiritual racism. All of them are true in the specific place and specific historical moment. Those that, frequently, are not true are the men, those who use the name of religion to force others to follow their political, social and economic concepts. They exploit and degrade them, thus deceiving them.

Are esoteric cults the best religion?

Evidently not. First of all, because those cults end up being simple “makeshift” religions, more or less supported by a greater one; and this is how we hear of “Esoteric Christianity” or of “Hare Krishna”. Secondly, because there is nothing “esoteric” about them... There are only different mixtures of alienations and fragments of incorrectly recompiled traditions.

Without, Philosophy, that is, without the Love of Truth, there aren’t any forms of Mysticism that don’t crush one group in order to elevate another and that aren’t unnatural.

The study of the History of Humanity gives us the eclecticism to see that the faith of Apollo-Helios is as valid as that of “our Father who art in heaven”. And to philosophically respect the path that each one creates and feels is the best, beyond the baptism received at birth from the good will of the priests, or simply through family customs.

The light of Philosophy allows us to distinguish the many colors and forms, and to discover in them, as in the entire Universe, the PRESENCE OF GOD.

Translated from 'La Presensia Divina' http://www.revistaesfinge.com/?p=283

Biological Clocks

2008-11-25T17:09:00.000-08:00

In his eternal search, currently focused on scientific discovery, man has rediscovered the so-called biological clocks. Their existence was suspected for more than a century, when Ontogony and Philogony became related.

We say rediscovered because in the medicine of the ancient Egyptians it was known that each part of the body, the psyche, and the Soul, was governed by a different genius or race of genie that, logically, acted in different manners and had dissimilar vital rhythms.

This is easy to observe. In practice we see that when a person dies from a liver disease, the heart can be in excellent shape. We have the example of the formation of organ banks apt for transplants into other bodies; organs continue to have the capacity to function, although its companions have caused the death of that bio-robot that we call “body”. We aren’t speaking of the cases of accidental death, but rather those from “natural” causes.

By dealing with this topic in a strictly materialist vision we would be in contradiction with reality, seeing as in the fetal formation, the first cellular differentiations - that is, the first clocks that begin to function independently - are those relative to the upper and central nervous system. If all biological clocks were adjusted in the same manner, it’s obvious that we would all die of old age and failure of these elements and not from other more ‘recent” ones, like the stomach, the bone structure or the respiratory system.

We must also think about the fact that the different forms of life readjust certain clocks; and while this represents a certain truth... it's not the whole truth. Brothers who where born from the same mother, in almost identical circumstances, and who develop in the same environment, end up being physically, psychologically, and spiritually very different and present their own distinctive characteristics of biological maturity.

The only thing that we could mention as being equal in all human beings is precisely their inequality.

They say that Hippocrates, two thousand years ago, held as his fundamental principle the following motto: Sicknesses do not exist, only sick people.”

In reality, sicknesses do exist and they also are governed by a type of elemental or genius: but its manifestations, applied to different people, with different karmas, cannot be the same.

Thus, except in cases of great epidemics in which the force of the sickness crushes all resistance and claims a great number of victims, giving the feeling of being a “punishment”, we cannot affirm that all humans, and all of his constitutive parts, are governed with equal “tempos” or, better stated, by equal “ages”.

There are youths of twenty whose hearts are already old, and elders of seventy-five whose hearts are like that of someone of thirty or forty.

These differences that signal distinct ages in the physical organs, are also found in the more subtle planes, like the vital, the emotional, and the mental.

Aside from the level of egoic development, which evidently counts, the actions of these clocks can be seen in our emotions and our thoughts. The “maturity” which at times we appreciate in an adolescent is not always the simple direct effect of their egoic quality, but can sometimes be a trick of external and internal circumstances that isn’t in accord with their young age, but rather would correspond to twice or three times their age.

The clocks, or genii or elementals, that govern the more or less accelerated time of each one the components of our personality, are reflected in the most evident manner - on the physical plane - in the sympathetic and para-sympathetic systems, such as the hormonal system. The mechanism that governs our growth is marvelous, so that if a person, for example, would grow at the same rate in which they grew in the first year of their life, they would arrive at an elephantesque height and a weigh several tons before the age of twenty. This would crush him, would break his bones and cause his death, unless he is maintained floating in a liquid medium, like a whale.

Likewise, the genii that governs the hormonal apparatus will give women and men the capacity to reproduce starting at a certain age and this capacity will be attenuated later, when the power to engender, especially on the energetic plane, will endanger the health and life of the body.

We don’t leave out the possibility then, that other genii do the same thing with our organs of expression in their respective planes.

The question then becomes obvious: what or who governs these clocks? The answer would be too long for this article, but in general, we can say that it is the karmic skein that does it. When I refer to the “skein”, it’s because there isn’t, as you know, only one type of karma, but rather many: from the immediate personal to the collective cosmic with its stellar and planetary influences. There are also energetic centers, some tellurian and others cosmic, as the visible stars influence our visible bodies in a direct way and others indirectly, so the “doubles” of these stars and others that don’t have a physical body, act upon our subtle and invisible bodies, and we can’t discard their influence in concrete events.

Another question that arises spontaneously is: faced with all of this, with all its power and complexity, can we do anything to help ourselves and others? Are we simply spectators of a mechanism that, as if it was a great computer programmed million of years ago and in which newly integrated data affects the general unfolding in an insignificant degree?

It’s evident that we are facing a form of computer that has been programmed millions of years ago that is constantly integrating new elements and disposing of others.

But we mustn’t make the error, suggested by the materialists, of believing that all that isn’t strictly human is simply mechanical. “Mechanicity” is only a path built with more justice and goodness by the Divine Mind, basing itself on our past actions and decisions, looking to overcome our imperfections and giving us the opportunity, through Philosophy, to appreciate all these marvels, which is the best proof that God exists.

Yes, we can do something, if not many things, to help others and ourselves in our vital march towards realization. That is why we have will, the indestructible spiritual spark which is the brilliant thread of our ephemeral reincarnations.

With our mind exercised in philosophy thus understood, we can, as soon as we dedicate ourselves seriously to it, give more life to the clocks that are about to stop or adjust the mechanism of others that disappear on us, for example during fits of passion and anger.

Evidently our possibility of modification is limited by our own karmic cage and our own incapacity to conquer ourselves. Putting aside our cosmic “containers”, to which we cannot attain in our current moment of evolution, and which is a waste of time discussing; what is within our immediate possibilities is to lead a physical, psychical, and mental life as natural as possible and as uncontaminated as possible. To be even clearer: I’m not talking about doing gymnastics or not doing gymnastics, using sugar or saccharine, converting our physical plane into a sanctuary or our mind into a pure diamond. No. I’m referring to things closer to our reach and do not relate to fashions nor to pseudo-mystical alienations.; rather simply: avoiding intoxicating oneself physically, psychically, and mentally. As the Stoics would say “Nothing in excess”. That’s all. And knowing how to accept the good times and the bad times as natural occurrences.

Translated from 'Los Relojes Biologicos'
http://www.nueva-acropolis.es/FondoCultural/ciencia/Ciencia7.htm

The occult powers in man

2008-11-18T17:46:00.000-08:00

There is an old hermetic and cabalistic formula that goes: ‘TO DARE - TO LOVE - TO BE ABLE ”. To be able is the last and highest form of a process of individual and collective perfecting that will bring forth the Higher Man, the Servant, the New Man.

Generally, these powers are confused with the capacity to produce parapsychological phenomenon or to have “superhuman” inner experiences. And those who maintain this are not completely wrong, but what they know of the Book of Wisdom-which H.P.B. calls The Secret Doctrine-is but a single miserable page, which, separated from the others, signifies nothing nor can it give anything, except for hopes that lead us to erroneous pathways.

Power is a property of Being. Being is that which is able.

The powers of Being are reflected in the Microcosm; the God that we can think, imagine and understand, is the “Logos” of Plato. This Logos has three aspects: although it is trine in its Power, it is One in its essence.
I. WILL-LAW
II. LOVE-WISDOM
ENERGY-LIFE
III. INTELLIGENCE-FORM

To these principles correspond the ancient Formula TO DARE-TO LOVE-TO BE ABLE.

Therefore, the first is TO DARE, that is, to develop in ourselves a Will in the image and resemblance of the God that governs our Universe or existential Environment. This can be developed with a continuous attitude of courage before life; a vocation determined by risk and outer and inner adventures. It is to overcome fear, difficulties. It is to put our personality in its place of obedient servant and preventing it from interfering with our will to advance and triumph over anything and everything. It is to feel indestructible, forever young and strong; to feel it and thus to live it, without the least bit of interruption.

The second one is TO LOVE, but to love in such an intense and higher way than any human passion, which as sublimated as it may be, is no more than a deformed shadow of that Archetype. It is “To Love with the heart”, as is written in the Egyptian Magical texts. A pararational, insatiable, untiring love. It is the Love for all Beings and all things which, by approaching them and the mystery that they carry within, make us Wise. Wisdom does not exclude culture, it is its foundation, but the Sage does not need to read books that others have written, since he reads directly in the Akashic Annals, that are not as hidden as is generally believed. Logically, this capacity of ...shall we say...consultation is acquired gradually and comes to us by surprise; but if we dedicate ourselves to searching for it without knowing the true path, we get lost in a thousand intentions.

The third is TO BE ABLE; to be able, before anything, to put into practice and get the first-mentioned elements under complete control, since the Third Logos is born from the harmonic union of the First and Second. More specifically: without the First and without the Second, there is no Third. One plus two equals three.

We need then to have a Will of Iron, a Love of Gold and a Wisdom of Silver, a Mercurial Intelligence and a Form of Bronze. To be humanly perfect. When this happens, the powers and The Powers, are “automatically” awakened in the Service of the Great Spiritual Cause that calls us.

This is the path to awaken the occult powers in man.

A Seal of Inner Humility and of Silence and Secret, is the mark of this Alchemical Operation and the discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone. All the others are fancy, insanity and disorder, that always lead to misfortune.

In a world where the obscurity of ignorance is rampant, millions of people think they know where Thule or Agartha is because they’ve read some book; or that they are in contact with Galactic masters although they cannot control their sexual appetites or impulses, once again the Ancient Philosophy will rise among us and inspire those who are prepared for the Straight Road of Wisdom, for the Lesser Mysteries that are the doorway to the Greater Ones, the Arcane ones.

Translated from 'Los Poderes Ocultos en el Hombre'
http://www.wikilearning.com/monografia/como_se_despiertan_los_poderes_ocultos_en_el_hombre-como_se_despiertan_los_poderes_ocultos_en_el_hombre/2294-1

Jorge Livraga, The Dangers of “esotericism”

2008-11-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

The term esoteric signifies the occult nucleus or heart of Beings and Things: Its cause, its root, its reason for being. It is not something that is hidden, except from view, through a cover or a veil, although the ignorance of the observers and their materialist superficiality make them negate everything that their narrow concepts, lacking in high spirituality, prevents them from seeing, obscured by prejudices and false information.

If we take an example among a thousand, the esoteric would be like the blade of a sword, visible and known only to those who succeed in handling it and removing it from the scabbard or case, the only thing that is visible to those who don’t know the nature of this weapon and who are more attracted by the superficial adornments than by the solid and brilliant content; dangerous for those not instructed in its use and perception. Therefore, the exoteric is not in any manner antithetical to the esoteric, but is rather its box or container that is naturally related to its contents.

Nature is functionally one. Whoever brutally separates the esoteric from the exoteric, is sectioning life, dissipating it and killing everything that life feeds. They are unconscious assassinations of Reality.

Are there not any secret things?

Yes, but only for those who are unaware of them and not because they are eternal enigmas.
Our capacity for knowledge, perception and experience is not only in relation to the mysterious things themselves, but rather more in the measure of our own intrinsic capacity. A spoon draws the same amount of water from a small container as from the sea. It is useless to try to draw more liquid than our spoon-conscience can hold. The practical way, for those who really wish to advance on the Path of Spirituality, that is, of true esotericism, does not consist in rushing head on into a closed door, but rather in knowing how to build the key that will open it. That key, as the ancient Egyptians have wisely represented by what we call Ankh or Key of Life, is the man himself.

If people are fanatical or blinded by childish beliefs, they will stop at each step for the “exotic”. They will make a “Manichean” division of life between the esoteric - that which they ignore - and the exoteric - that which they know. They will form a primitive and erroneous conception of the Sacred Science, charged with superstition and fear. They will search, along twisted and dangerous paths, trying to reach a summit that always escapes them and makes them waste their existence walking hunched under the weight of their own fantasies, that can throw them into the abysses of insanity, egoism and physical and moral misery.

Are there then, any dangers in esotericism?

Yes, but like those that exist potentially in an automobile that one doesn’t know how to drive, in a Bible that one doesn’t know how to read, in a Baghavad-Gita that one doesn’t interpret correctly, and a weapon in the hands of a child, or a remedy that one fails to administer correctly.
Water is essential for all of us, but it can drown and kill someone who jumps into it and breaths it in through the nostrils.

We put the “Esotericism” in our title in quotation marks for these people, because that which many people understand as such really isn’t, but rather a crude imitation; a dangerous and hallucinated farce.

Unfortunately, the special characteristics of our historical moment of changes and manipulations has engendered a popular “esoterism-fiction” type of literature, which has nothing to do with the true philosophical esoterism, with the true search for the Roots of the Tree of Life.

So there you have it. A day doesn’t go by without some publication or “School” appearing that fills the heads of the unwary with the method of raising the Kundalini through contrived sexual relations, on how to reach Nirvana by eating carrots, on the form and manner of taking a ride in a UFO or how to get to know the Masters of Wisdom like tavern buddies.

A whole “esoteric” jungle bray their pseudo-knowledge, neigh their demented beliefs and stick their noses into various monuments that antiquity has left us, attributing the construction of the Great Pyramid to extra-terrestrials, or asserting that “The Hierarchy” (do those poor people have the slightest idea of what they are talking about?) transferred them from Tibet to the Andes, or from California to Ibiza.

Everyone makes horoscopes, thinks they know alchemy, reads the lines of the hands, invokes spirits, prepares curatives herbs, and “Initiations” come through the mail from a printed address, at the cost of only a few dollars.

The exploiters and the exploited increase and the mass of ignorance gets called “Esoteric Knowledge”. It’s enough for many to believe in something for it to become a certainty, a dogma. As democracy is in vogue, it’s also applied to this domain. They have inculcated in the people that, if the majority assert something, they have priority over the minority.

From a corner of History, Socrates asserted in the books of Plato that, even if all men became blind, the light will continue to exist and the tree will continue to be green. But Socrates, in his time, had to drink a cup of hemlock for not agreeing with the current majority that was governing Athens. Human stupidity is not new ... What is new are the stupid.

The black sea of this fanatical misinformation touches all fields of human activity. It’s growing and that’s dangerous.

See if any pacifist candidate doesn’t think he’s inspired by some Master of Wisdom to protest against NATO but not against the Pact of Warsaw. “The Shining Path”, in Peru, is not only inspired by the Marxist poet Mariatequi, but also by an “esoteric Cult” that lived in the high mountains to practice “Kumbamelas’ and that was captured by the very un-esoteric agents of Fidel Castro. Today they kill women, children and the elderly.

Furthermore, don’t many political parties that torture the people with imposed taxes and fines, perchance base themselves on “esoteric” leaders who have disappeared, whose words the “mediums” who govern them take upon themselves to interpret?

Isn’t the degrading consumption of drugs perchance, related to the desire for “supernatural” experiences?

What does true esotericism have to do with all that garbage? Nothing. But from all corners, there arises more or less secret cults and fraternities that, shielding themselves with the paralyzing Gorgon of their aberrations, produce more and more victims.

Faced with these demented manifestations of massification, we end up asking ourselves: what is it that’s happening? Why so much insanity and violation of the most basic human rights? How was reality so deformed? History so twisted? How many well-intentioned people who wished to know more about life and death were threatened?

The answer is simple, yet terrible.

We are living through the final moments of a cultural form, a civilization that is crumbling under its own foundations, and which is hiding it and ignoring this reality.

The advent of a new Middle Ages is evident and like a great earthquake, all the elevated things have to fall, rolling at the feet of the disconcerted, who mutilate them and carve in their once beautiful forms, their idols and monsters that spring from their terrors. They later adore them only to be crushed by new masses that fall to destruction from above.

When the barbarians entered into Rome, they used the marble statues that crowned the mausoleum of Hadrian as stones for improvised catapults and projectiles ... having first destroyed them.

The vacuum of power created by the fall of the Permanent Values has given rise to the spread of exotic beliefs held by fanatical men. Fear opens their way, ignorance clears their paths. The dwarfocracy raises the buffoons up high and proclaims them “Envoys”, “Gurus”, “Masters”. And from such teachers come like teachings.

We won’t gain anything by making a mere catalog outlining our disgraces. We mustn’t be catastrophical. We must raise our hope and our strength like an old and renovated banner that redeems the human individual from the mass of inhuman mud, and from the fatalistic and sensual inertia that debilitates.

There exists a true Philosophical, Humanistic Esotericism, that maintains a belief in God and its visible and invisible Creatures.

There exists an Acro-polis or “High City”, a spiritual Aristocracy which is rightfully open to all those who, forgetting the separatisms, try to help their brothers get out of the bog, not only with pretty words but also by holding out their arms, not asking where they came from, but rather where they want to go, and by showing them clean and secure paths.

Every lady, every knight, in the ancestral sense of those terms, is morally bound not only to be free, but also to help others free themselves. We need to inspire good actions and work hard, surmounting our own defects and forcing ourselves to face the abyss in order to get closer to it and give help to all those in need.

Yes, true Esotericism exists, existed, and will exist. It is the search for the essences, for the pure, for the lofty, for the immortal, for man and for God. It is the truth without unnecessary clothing, it is the new seed of a new man. We inherit from our elders, who do not deform the past history nor that which will be forged in the future. It is what is natural in the bosom of Nature.

True Esotericists are, above all, Philosophers; far from absurd beliefs and mad conceits. They investigate things simply, without lacking in courtesy or elegance. Before being Mages, they want to be a good people, regardless if they are rewarded by karma or not, since they know that there is no greater magic than that which gives goodness and because the good is in their Inner Nature.

They love the beautiful and the just; qualities and values that are always evident for those who search with their heart.

They believe in God, they believe in themselves, they believe in the Beneficent Destiny that the Highest has given to all the Beings of the Universe, visible and invisible.

The dangers of Esotericism do not exist for them.

Because true Esotericism correctly understood, is not a danger, but rather a return to Nature and to God. Are you going to wait to return? To return to happiness? To returning to being creative?

Beyond the somber horizon, a New Dawn is rising.

Translated from 'Los Peligros del 'Esoterismo' - http://www.upasika.com/docs/livraga/Livraga%20Jorge%20-%20Peligros%20del%20esoterismo.pdf

The need for good men

2008-11-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

This need of a moral outlook that springs from an inherently pure nature, from the essence of Being, was stressed by Plato in all of his works and, more than twenty centuries later, by Kant and his followers.

And there hasn’t been a self-respecting philosopher, nor any thinker, who put this necessity in doubt, although with the fall of the Classical World, this self-evident principle, has become conditioned by strong theological, political and social, or simply economical currents.
With the development of instrumental mechanics in the physical world, similar processes has been assumed to take place on the metaphysical plane, leaving individuals little by little buried in a mire of what we could call a “cult of process” and of procedures.

Thus, the inherent goodness of man became conditioned by his religion, by his family origin, by geographical, racial, and many other details that would cover whole pages that would make up a detailed collection of prejudices and superficialities.

Humanity then became mesmerized by plans and systems, by the forms of the receptacles rather than the content. Faced with this split in the ethical platform, people fell back on the use of more or less utopian formulas of conceiving the idea of evil as being real - not just the absence of good, but a distinct presence – and consequently resorting to exorcisms of all colors, depersonalizing the individual. Being was given secondary importance, conditioned by the processes that, hypothetically, would create, by way of confessing or reasoning, the perfect Man from his own imperfections.

A practical image would be like believing that by piling up bricks of clay in a specific form and manner, we could build a wall of solid rock, because the “magic” of the combination would transform the nature of all the individual components.

From the spiritual massifying through the centuries, arose the modern assembly lines, and without verifying it practically, it was believed that by combining various aspects together, there could be formed a multi-faceted creature of virtue and goodness, identical to his predecessors, and to those who will follow. Furthermore, the evolution of forms based on the failures and successes of experience became accepted. However, .Man was no longer the important thing and priority was given to every man together, as if they were some invention of the systems, men whose own systems gave them the right to survival based on the capacity of to adapt and to shed all individual characteristics... and this was became generally accepted.

The products of the assembly line are rated according to where they came from, that is according to the system that generated them.

Christians were good, the “pagans” bad.
In Santiago they were called “Moor-slayers”.
The nobles had “blue blood” and the blood of others was “wicked”.
The people are good and the kings are bad... Hurrah for the guillotines!
The worker is good and industry is bad.
The military is better than the worker, or vice versa.
The “chosen people”... “the people of God”... Apparently, the “good” in order to exist, needs the “bad”.

And this common collective denominator is why we speak of the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims, the atheists, the whites, the blacks, the rich, the poor, the knowledgeable and the ignorant. That is racism in all its colors.

This massifying aspiration to a collective redemption, and the consequent destruction of those who don’t participate in this or that redemption, class or party, places all its hope in systems, credos, clans and acceptances. The individual man loses importance, to the point where it becomes inconceivable for someone not to belong and militate in the Party or Sect that is in vogue.

Nevertheless, the splitting into factions of communism, fascism, nazism and capitalism with its respective political, social and economical characteristics, has raised doubt among the people as to the effectiveness of systems. Considering that, perhaps orchestrated by powerful sources of power, almost all of the people of the Earth clamor for democracy and the right to vote, when the time comes to go to the ballots, an average of 50 percent neglect to do so, or where it is mandatory, they leave it blank or deliberately boycott the lists prefabricated by the system.
With the exceptions of certain modalities of Islam, among the religions its another story. Although on the demographic maps it appears that, for example, Italy is Catholic, in reality the churches are full of curious tourists, the monasteries empty, converted into non-religious meeting places and the Pope is an object of jokes about his nationality or his clothing. Evidently, what is traditionally understood as “sacred”, is very far from it.

The solution to this problem could quite conceivably be found in the very simple understanding that what is really important is not the systems, but the men that compose them. And that the moral quality of these men is the fundamental thing.

It matters little that a country is governed by “the right wing” or “the left wing”, that its regime be a presidential one or a monarchy. What matters is the man, or the men responsible for the administration of a country, are good people; people who are honorable, just, brave, and who have integrity.

The worst of systems, if it is composed and conducted by good men, brings happiness, wealth, goodness and peace to the people. The best of systems would be a torment for those who are governed if its governors are people who lack moral fiber. The myth of collective redemption through systems has proven its fallibility. In time, the most organized and natural of systems would fall to pieces if it was not sustained by men and women of honor and morals, in a word: GOOD.

It is not a question of a having a specific political, social or religious faction or sect coming into power. What we need is good men, and for those good men to be recognized as such, and for them to be given the maximum amount of responsibilities in all fields. If this were done, they would accept the responsibilites, not out of ambition, but rather through a spirit of generosity and solidarity.

If we go back to Plato, the good shoemaker has the duty to make shoes for all; the good tailor, clothes for all, etc.; he who governs himself, he who controls his passions and directs his ideas with the force of his will, would be the most apt at applying what is most beneficial for all the members of the community.

If we succeed in supporting these good men and women and give them the necessary cultural instruments, they will be able to integrate any form of government; whatever the form of government, in their hands, it will be effective.

If a good man is made to represent a religion, whichever one it is, he will awaken in his believers the Presence of God; they will see it reflected and made possible in him.

If a good man dedicates himself to Art, or to Science or to whatever activity, it will be illuminated by his goodness. It doesn’t matter what path he takes; in his goodness he will always chose what is best.

It is necessary to be aware that it is not enough to simply change from the XXth to the XXIst century for the racisms, the persecutions, the illicit profiteering, the genocides to cease; there has to be a change “from the inside” esoterically, for the contaminating machines of the systems give way to these good men.

It is important to meet them, and to give them recognition and support.

For a man, there is no greater enemy than another man, if he is bad, nor a better friend and helper than another man, if he is good.

Let’s be valiant and begin to throw into the garbage bin of History, the harmful systems that govern us, so that this New Man, whose main characteristic is that of being good, can walk over the debris.

Translated from 'Necesidad de hombres buenos', Nueva Acropolis #171, Spain
http://www.nueva-acropolis.org.ar/Necesidad-de-Hombres-buenos.355.0.html

Jorge Angel Livraga - Fundamentals of the Acropolis Ideal

2008-05-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

One of the tasks that we have given the New Acropolis Monthly Magazine, aside from the already stated one of presenting information and education on philosophical and cultural topics, is that of serving as an instrument of presentation of the ideals that daily call to work so many acropolitans in the world. We would, through this Magazine, like these ideals to be known, understood, shared. Many of those who read us also try to give life to these sacred ideas that inspire us. And because it is always difficult to define the higher and transcendent things, and because sometimes ideas have a special power when the words can be seen, we have asked the Founder and General Director of New Acropolis, professor Jorge Angel Livraga Rizzi, to explain to us, one more time, the how and why of the Acropolis.

The Acropolis Ideal has not been invented, nor has it been created by someone. It is something natural that is in the souls of many people. When men feel that they sympathize or unite themselves to the Acropolitan Ideal, it’s not a matter of “having entered into the Acropolis”, but rather that they have entered that Acropolis within themselves. In every man, in every woman, there is an inner Acropolis, a need for inner realization, a dream ...

Man is like a giant, like a great bald eagle that is trapped in a small cage. If we opened the cage, would we have to teach it to fly? Certainly not. The only thing we need to do is to remove the bars, because the eagle was born to fly. That which makes it fly is not only the act of opening the cage, but rather its vocation for the sky, its ancestral dream of verticalisation.

We, in Acropolis, don’t only endeavor to read books, to study or understand them; fundamentally, we try to return to the founts of knowledge of Nature; we wish to learn from Nature, to be inspired by the cycles of the sun that rises day after day. To learn from the inexorability of the stars that travel through the night, or from the water that flows between the rocks. To learn from the stones solidity and stability, in a world where everything disappears, where everything is perishable, where nobody manages to say: “I am”, or “I want”, or “This should be like so”.

In this damp world, in this world full of ties, where nothing is definite, where nothing is firm; in this world of paper where everything breaks, we would like to build something that is firm, that will be solid, that has inner fire, that will be like a kind of island in the middle of the ocean, an island where all the shipwrecked can come, that has a lighthouse that guides all the ships to port, an island where the waves of History break with white foam, and are able to give a message and a color.

The Acropolis, then, can be said to have the function to unite all things.

It is simply an attitude in the classical philosophical sense, that is, it is not a interrogation on being and existing, but rather a new focus based on the strength of its being so old, embracing all things, all attitudes.

What, in Acropolis, do we think of science?

Science is the discovery of the laws that relate the causes to the effects, a greater understanding of Nature, of the Universe, and of ourselves. But how can we arrive at this science without first understanding ourselves and the Universe?

Man is caught between two infinities. Think of what we are made of physically: cells that are in turn made of molecules, which are in turn made of atoms, which are in turn made of sub-particles ... And so it appears that there is no end towards the smaller and smaller, which is also an infinity. And where is man? On the earth, which is a planet of the solar system, and this solar system is part of a galaxy, and this galaxy is a tiny component of a universe, this universe being a facet of Something much greater ... And so we feel that there is another higher infinity.

If at the formal level we are between two infinities, between a cross formed by the great microcosmic infinity and the great macrocosmic infinity, how can this not be the same at the spiritual, the psychological, and scientific levels?

Science, therefore, does not only consist in knowing, for example, what is the valence of Carbon, or to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon, or to know how blood circulates through the body. We are looking for a Science that on top of knowing all that can also tells us why blood circulates in the body, what does the distance between the Earth and Moon signify, what secret moves the Universe, what secret moves ourselves. A Science that isn’t only at the disposition of the strongest or those who know the most, a science that doesn’t frighten us but rather serves to help and to build, a Science that can protect, a white Science, a healthy Science.

Philosophy

We look for it deep down, in the roots of time. Time is like the earth: one has to dig in it. When one digs in the earth superficially, all one gets is perishable dust; but if we dig deeply we manage to reach solid rocks. By digging in History we can manage to reach the solid rocks of philosophy. It is on these rocks that we wish to set our principles. We don’t wish to follow the thousands of commentators that all the greats who have taught something have had; we want to go to the sources and understand that there are things that are useful for today, for tomorrow and for always. Through Philosophy, we want to arrive at those things that are always useful, and that philosophical attitude is “Love of Knowledge”. We say Love first and later Knowledge, because without Love there is no Knowledge possible, without Love there is no possibility to use Knowledge in the right manner.

But Love is not a lax or loose state of being that makes us permeable to everything. Love is not a contemplative attitude of defeat, but rather a tremendous force that unites things and maintains them. Like a tiny stone picked up from the ground, if it falls from our hand, will return to its mother, the earth, which inexorably attracts it; in the same way, we want to have that will to love that the stone has towards mother earth. The love of the stone is untiring, because it isn’t an instinctual love that requires satisfaction, but rather a love that is timeless, that lasts beyond the years and the centuries, a love that laughs in the face of the millennium.

What do we understand by religion?

Beyond the names of the religions, we care about the “re-ligare”, that is, the reunion and the mystical act, the verticality of man. Man is man when he recognizes that he has a spirit, or better stated when the spirit recognizes that it has body, because we are so materialized that we feel spiritual when we say “I have a soul”. Where do we get the consciousness to say that? From the body. It would be much better to say “I have a body”, and we would then have our consciousness settled in the soul.

A true mysticism is not achieved strictly through prayers or by putting a knee to the ground. A true mysticism is a special inner attitude that makes our personality crackle like fire makes kindling crackle. Like the fire that is hidden in the kindling and surges from it, that is how true mysticism surges through us, uplifting us, improving us, ennobling us. Because if all those things aren’t present, there is therefore no religion.

We need to reassert the religious principles in man. Because what precisely separates man from animals is not that he thinks, nor is it that he has characteristics of goodness, because at times dogs are better than men. That which separates man from animals is the intuition of the Enigma that we call God. The most primitive man, even the cavemen, puts a stone on top of another and feels that there is a cosmic mystery that he is representing thusly. And no animal does this.
More than fighting for labels or appearances, one must fight for the inner rebirth of man. A man without mysticism doesn’t live, a man without mysticism dries up. Mysticism is the force of all things.

And Art?

Art is the concretization of Beauty; it is the harmonic conjugation of different parts. We cannot rationalize it: Art is intuitive. But art must have a characteristic, in this new world for the new man that we are proposing: Art must not only be an expression of man in a specific state of consciousness, but also must be his captation of a cosmic mystery and a human mystery. Throwing together four blotches, or putting together four lines in a haphazard manner, so that those who look at it can imagine anything that they want, that isn’t Art; that is a game. True Art has to have a message, a mystique, it needs to be able to communicate without explanations, above all words. That which requires too many explanations, is at best craftwork ... When it is authentic, Art doesn’t require explanations because it touches everyone, each person at their level.

Equality

From a more political aspect, we make the mistake of wanting to equalize all. But what is equality? Nobody could name two things that are exactly equal. Equality is a myth. All things are differentiated is some aspect. But the smallest have invented a myth in order to make themselves equal to the greatest. And they started to scream: “We all have the same height”; but in by screaming this they don’t stop being small. And in a world where they make a cult to the small, and where the giants are decapitated, where the great people must lower themselves because they bother, where it is shameful to be virtuous, by laying on the ground we all become equal.

But let’s get back on our feet. Then it won’t be the size of one’s waistline that counts. What will count will be the verticality and the height of the head. This is a proposal, a very old proposal, by the way. People everywhere are tired of confusion, of violence, of the cult to something that doesn’t exist. God has been replaced with words; virtue has been replaced with error; profound spiritual values have been replaced with simple aggression; the power to face life has been replaced with useless protests. And who protests? Protesting is the characteristic of slaves; action is the characteristic of free men. Those who have hands and hearts don’t need to protest; they act. And what is fundamental is to make History. We must understand that, as men, we have a past, and that we need to deeply penetrate the roots of our culture into the past in order to steady ourselves solidly, in order to secure ourselves against the winds. Like a tree, the deeper its roots are, the thicker its trunk can grow, and if the night comes, our trees would be so high that they could still see the stars.

Not only do we need that attitude of verticality upwards and downwards, but we also need to have the courage of our convictions.

Today these words may sound strange: humanity has been convinced that they are a spot of oil; that the only form of growth is sideways, but never in depth ...

We say that man is not a spot of oil; we assert that man is a burning flame and was born to elevate himself, in order to reach higher places and give light; to lose himself in the infinite space, not without beforehand shining light on the earth and burning the wood that supports him.

Man must have inner strength, he must have a feeling of youth. That is why we say in New Acropolis that youth is not a question of white or black hair. Youth is in the heart and we are young at heart, and we have the merit of saying what we feel and to do what the historical necessity invests us with. We are young, and that cry of youth will run from man to man.

The materialists, the Pharisees, the unbelieving are numerous? Nonetheless, when you put a match to a pile of wood, will the fire burn less because the pile is large? It only takes one to burn for all the others to burn. It’s enough to awaken mystical desire, self-confidence among small groups for the whole pile of wood that surrounds us begins to burn, to give light, to give fire. The large numbers do not favor materialism, they go against it. The more wood, the more flames, the more fire.

Therefore let no one feel alone, let no one feel poor, because no one is poor or alone, if God is with them.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://www.nueva-acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=esp&ID=72

The Structure of the Earth according to Esoteric Teachings

2008-04-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

During the final years of the 1880’s, H. P. Blavatsky decided to communicate to her more direct disciples certain teachings and traditions gathered from her travels, especially from India, Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet, and Himalayan China. She transmitted many elements orally that do not appear in her great work, of several volumes, “The Secret Doctrine”; an unfinished work, as was her Theosophical Glossary, to her disciples at Adyar and especially in London.

Today, through this magazine, one of these teachings comes to public light for the first time. For reasons of space and for a better understanding for today’s readers, we have voluntarily omitted many of its parts. We believe that with what follows, taught until now only in Classes of the New Acropolis International Organization, is sufficient.

We would like our kind readers to duly consider it as another hypothesis concerning the global structure of our planet. We aren’t able to offer a bibliography, which is so appreciated by today’s students, even if unsure or repetitive. Neither do we wish it to be taken as a “dogma of faith”, since it does not answer to any Faith, whether certain or not, is obviously not for us to point out.

Since the remotest antiquity, the Sages have known the general form of the Earth and depending on where and when, its natural structure. Everyone considered it a living Being, equilibrated by vital ecosystems and capable of falling ill and regaining health through its own mechanisms programmed by its Creator. This Living Being or Macrobios as the neoplatonist Marcion called it was at the same time a cell in the fabric that formed cosmic systems and organs of myriads of worlds, visible and invisible. Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the instigation of the Inquisition, on the 17th of February, 1600 in Rome for positing this knowledge.

Just because the Earth is a Living Being, that does not mean that its body has the same composition and behavior as our own. Coral, a pine, or a seagull are living beings and do not behave, formally, like man. We mustn’t confuse the One Life with its transitory containers. The Great Water-Carrier pours his Celestial Water into different receptacles, be it mud or crystal. If these break with use and the Water escapes, the Water does not disappear, but rather, through its cycle of evaporation and condensation, it will again return to concrete manifestation and fill new containers... which will in turn have a limited life that will be equal, although not exactly, to that of its predecessors.

According to the ancient teachings, the Earth is younger than the Moon. The Earth was formed and became condensed while the Moon was becoming a spatial corpse where its life remained through its own disintegration process, until its extinction through involution. On Earth, life goes on expressing each time more richness, since it is in evolution. This process, in general lines, has ceased at the present, and its current cycle, based on the structural mechanics of Carbon, is starting its march towards its end, even if this will not occur until several hundreds of millions of years from now.

Unfortunately, the contaminating factors, produced especially by human overpopulation and the extinction of hundreds of plant and animal species, can accelerate the process of degradation, and force the Planet to take measures to save it from that “malady” which Man has become.

The anatomical structure of the Earth, according to the ancient teachings, is based on the outlines of the Triple Logos, as Plato called it. The Logos is the form in which we humans can understand the God that governs us. Our mind is dual: it has a binary program and can only understand duality and its product. Especially its product, three, which in geometry is expressed by the triangle. The only closed figure that we can conceive in a dual manner is the circle, relating the circumference and the central point. The central point has no dimension; the circumference has no beginning nor end in itself. Only the triangle, the trine or the trinity, dialectical faculty of the trine, is understandable and conceivable by us in a normal manner.

The internal structure of the earth can be expressed pedagogically based on that aspect. It was taught thusly:
1) A metallic nucleus in which is predominantly of iron, but with a denser intimate structure than the superficial iron that we all know of. An iron with a much greater mass and an enormous magnetic capacity; its atoms are “compressed” upon themselves, is denser and therefore has a degree of hardness of a crystalline type. In the old terminology of the Orient, it is called the “Egg of Iron” because its general form is not completely spherical. Its size is approximately one quarter of the earth’s sphere. It is highly radioactive, although this modern term does not exactly agree with its real nature, since today” we understand “radio-active” to be a higher degree of “attractors” that, being so, emit energy.

2) It is surrounded by a mass that is equivalent to two thirds of the size of the planet. The structure of that mass is very complex, with metallic radial extensions that the ancients called “The Gray Trees” whose roots where in contact with the nucleus and went expanding towards the surface.

3) The crust has a thickness of approximately one quarter of the Planet’s size, globally. Their occurs therein phenomena of potentialization of heat and electricity and it is like a covering, protecting, fertile shield , with a high capacity to absorb and transmute the cosmic rays that penetrate it, some very deeply. The Sages of Egypt compared its surface to the skin of a crocodile, since it has plates that give it flexibility; these are today known as the “Continental Shields”.

On the etheric plane, the Earth is considered to be a great magnet. The currents go from pole to pole, in an arc, from the magnetic North pole to the magnetic South pole, like a fountain that bathes the surface of the Earth; at the South it moves inwards and wraps around the Black Egg, returning once more to the North.

There is also mention of an Earthly “aura” that covers, from its surface, a distance equivalent to three times the earth’s radius. Also mentioned is a thick ethero-magnetic ring that oscillates lightly on the perpendicular of the magnetic axis, and which the last initiates of Rome called “The Belt of Venus”, the place where, asleep, the souls ready to incarnate dwell. From there, and this Plato has clearly related, with their unconscious desires to return to having a body of flesh, they emit mental forms that are the foundation of sex, the desire to procreate. That is why the School of Plato maintained that love is generated by the dead, an assertion many times misinterpreted. The souls will inhabit the fetus of one family or another, in one place or another on the planet in accordance with karma or Destiny.

Current science (and that of the near future more so) is already observing some of these assertions, and so have formally ceased to be “secret” according to the criteria of the author of these lines.

It is to be hoped that when we know more about our beautiful Planet and the creatures that inhabit it, there will be an increasing tendency towards a healthy respect towards it’s nature which allows us to continue our life on the Earth, as planned, and without traumas that are always painful.

Nonetheless, it is sad to see that men, or rather the inept political and religious leaders that govern us, are precipitating themselves into medieval conceptions, fed by fanaticism, racisms, and clinical and interminable vendettas. It is essential not to play that game and to work for a new and better World.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://www.nueva-acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=esp&ID=150

Fundamentals of the theory of reincarnation. Will we return?

2008-04-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

This theme is fundamental for all of us, because it is one of the themes that is embraced by Philosophy, that is, the search for Wisdom.

Today, in our current civilization, there has been a great development of science and especially of technology. The mechanical means that we possess allow us to travel quickly from one place to another; allow us to communicate to each other; allow us to be in contact with one another. But these mechanical means, and this scientific prejudice in the materialist and practical sense, has deprived us of the initiative to listen and understand the inexorable phenomenon of Nature.

Nonetheless, there have been other eras and other times; there have been other men and other towns that have had more time or a greater disposition, or more of a liking for these things. But today, in regards to the fundamental problems of man, we are as ignorant if not more so than the men who made the walls-paintings in the caves of Altamira.

For this reason, we continue to ask an age-old question that arises from new lips: What happens to us? What happens to our lives? Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? ...

The different religions of different periods have tried to solve this problem. They have, by way of symbols - as Jesus says in the New Testament - given to man a series of truths.

It is obvious, however, that in our current and practical bias, in our day to day world, our conscience is asleep to symbolic questions. There are only a few questions that shout from within us: Do we completely disappear when we die? Does our conscience get lost in the void? Do we go to some place of trial? Is their a Hell? Is there a Heaven? Will we return anew to this world?
This being the case, I would like to touch upon the possibility of us returning to this world. It is a philosophical possibility which is, to be sure, hardly a new idea.

All the ancient cultures and civilizations, as far back as our knowledge goes, had at their disposition mechanisms of knowledge that perceived the possibility of reincarnation as something factual.

Let’s take a few examples. In America, among the Aztecs, their existed the belief that the soul returns anew to this world. They said that the men who die, who are very attached to the earth, remain prisoner of the earth’s enchantment.

But they also maintained that, the souls that have liberated themselves from the world, those who no longer have attachments in the world, those who believe that there is “something more’, and further away, go to what today we would call the sun’s photosphere, that is, that they go to live in the Light, as dragonflies, in the form of Huitzilopotchli.

The ancient Egyptians also believed that men could reincarnate. Everyone that died had a trial that transpired in the “Am-Duat”. The Am-Duat, a kind of purgatory, was a place where the heart of the defunct was weighed in a scale, and who was asked a series of questions which he had to answer. Those who were sufficiently subtle could join the Amen-Ti, that is, the Land of Amon, the magical place where everyone finds what they want to find. The marvelous place where the lotus’ never close, where ships never sink, where kisses are never betrayed; where food never goes bad; where words are never forgotten; where everyone has the gift of language and understands each other ... But those who, lacking that spiritual force, remain prisoner of the desire to return to earth, cannot go past the Am-Duat and must return once again to earthly experiences.

The Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans speak of the same thing. This includes the primitive Christians who, up until the Council of Trent, held certain lines of knowledge that asserted that people return to earth, as well as that Jesus Christ was a kind of reincarnation of one the previous prophets. As we can see, this belief has existed throughout History.
It is perhaps in India that one can find and acquire the most precise knowledge, nowadays, regarding the topic of Reincarnation.

The Hindus, within their distinct religions or cults, have ended up asserting that in this world everything reincarnates, all things are born anew.

Contrary to what is generally believed, the Hindus practised philosophy and dialectics before the Greeks, and attempted to demonstrate, no only through faith, but also through reason, that man could be born again. They said that all things were cyclical. They spoke of great periods of active time which they called Manvantaras, and of other cycles of rest or Pralayas. They considered that this activity - which they attributed to the expiration and inspiration of Brahma, that is, the breath of the Deity - also existed in all things, in the same way that we, during the course of a day, spend a certain amount of time awake and a certain amount of time asleep.

Thousands of years ago, they had discovered the laws of Lavoisier: “In Nature, nothing is lost, everything is transformed.” They had observed the cyclical recurrence of the Constellations and the repetitive form in which the Sun shines on us every morning. They deduced from this that all things were cyclical, that all things were, in part non-repetitive, and are in other aspects, repetitive and return to be.

Continuity and eternity is not, for Hindu thought, a statism or permanence of a thing, but rather more of a continuous becoming of things.

The concept of “duration” and of “eternity” does not reside in the objective permanence of something, but rather in the permanence of a constant change whose finality is mysterious, in the utilization of an inner spiritual impulse that moves things towards their ultimate destiny.

This impulse brings about a succession of interconnected phenomena. The Hindus speak of the Law of Karma: the Law of Cause and Effect. Everything, everything that happens is the effect of what happened previously and the cause of what will happen afterwards. Nothing, no word, no attitude, no creature, no world, no state is alone and unique in the Universe, but rather the fruit of what has happened, and the germ of what will happen.

This law of action and reaction is integrated in a cosmic directionality, in a Law; that is to say that things exist and move for a reason. And that is another question that we all ask: Why do all the things that happen, happen? Unable to comprehend certain apparent injustices, man falls into a form of atheism, because, he asks himself: Is God just? Is God good? Why are some people born in a golden cradle, while others are born in a pigpen? What kind of unjust God would make a child be born sick or blind, and in turn give others every possibility?

This is an age-old question. It prompted the Hindu philosophers and metaphysicians to believe in the existence of a “path” which is called Sadhana, and a Law which they called Dharma. A Universal Law which makes all things have a specific place with a predetermined end.
The Hindus therefore believe in the reincarnation of souls. But not in a reincarnation of a simplistic sort in which a person dies, remains in a subtle world for a time, and returns anew. Because if it were that easy, we would all clearly remember what we were.

In order to understand Hindu thought, its important to remember that they believed that man isn’t homogenous, but rather has a constitution of seven different vehicles. Some of these vehicles are the ones that reincarnate while others do not.

It is asserted in their ancient books that man is made of seven sheaths in different states of vibration. Starting from the bottom to the top, we would have within us something in common with rocks, which is common to all things that surround us: the physical body, or Stula Sharira, that which has density. Higher up - and by higher up I’m referring to another dimension - there is the Prana Sharira, that is, the vital or energetic body; that which differentiates a living man from a dead or dying man.

The third vehicle from the bottom, is the Linga Sharira, which in esotericism is normally called “the double” or the psychic double. This is what we have in common with animals; while the Prana Sharira is what we have in common with the vegetable world, and the Stula Sharira with the mineral world.

A wholes series of correspondences exist between the constitution of man and the constitution of Nature: the physical part with the mineral world, the energetic part with the vegetable world, the psychic-animal part with the animal world, the latter is where our passions, our dreams, and our fantasies are rooted.

Furthermore there is the Kama-Manas, that is, a “mind of desires”, an egotistical mind that fears, gets startled and worries when it learns of something that is going to happen.

Far beyond the latter is Manas or the higher mind. This mind is serene, constant. After comes the vehicle called Budhi which is intelligent intuition, without distortion of thought, and finally, Atma, the Pure Will that reflects the Deity in man.

The first four bodies or vehicles mentioned are, for the Hindus, mortal and disintegrate upon death. Death is considered to be a wasting process that begins with birth. From the moment of birth up to the time of death, man dies little by little, until the end where he arrives at the final collapse, in which he loses the physical part, the energetic part, the psychological part and the egoistic-mental part.

There remains three deeper planes of consciousness: Manas, Buddhi and Atma which can be used to ascend to heaven; there would exist in man an individual part, that cannot be divided and which is the basis of the “Skandhas”, that is, the causes of action, of accumulated Karma.
Now we can understand why we are sometimes born in a golden cradle, and at other times in a stable. Because from the philosophical point of view, we don’t always learn more when being born in a golden cradle than in a stable.

A man can be born in one context or another and can always extract an experience. But this experience is limited, because if he is born in a family of peasants, this man will have the experience of a peasant, but he will be lacking in that of an artist, a military, a politician, a poet.

Because of this part that is lacking in experiences, he returns to occupy the body of a child about to be born; he returns for new experiences, new encounters, new biological vibrations.
That which reincarnates is not the whole man, only a part, the higher or spiritual part w
hich generally, is not very developed. Our era is currently focused on material problems and not on the development of the Higher Self ...

Therefore, the laws that govern Destiny, according to the Hindus, make it so that only the higher part reincarnates. But we have little consciousness of the higher part. According to Plato, who also explained reincarnation, he spoke of the Waters of Lethe, of the river that causes us to forget. When one drinks those waters, one is reborn without remembering practically anything; sometimes one is reborn with a spark of memory, but not with anything intelligent or ordered.

Plato - with a typically Greek sarcasm - says that the most passionate throw themselves into the waters of the Lethe and drink with both hands, later falling into a deep sleep; and in turn, the prudent ones are those that only drink a little and can later remember something.

In the “Myth of Er”, Plato develops this and explains it perfectly. Remember how he has Socrates being asked: “From where do the living come from?” to which Socrates replies by asking in turn : “Where do the dead come from? The dead are born from the living and the living from the dead”

For Plato, Socrates, and the whole line of Greek philosophical thought, there existed an inexorable cycle in which a same humanity goes to renew energies, renewing contact with the world, and realizing new experiences.

Is this for certain or not? It isn’t an easy question to debate, we are simply expounding this form of thought in order for each person to form their own idea.

Everyone knows that we are in a world governed by propaganda. In fact, philosophy, and in our acropolitan position within Philosophy, propose an inner encounter in order for each person to be able to think for oneself.

It is preferable to make their own mistakes, rather than being lifted to a form of truth that they will never understand; that will never allow them to have a developed individuality. That is why we ask without expecting an answer: Will we be reborn? Do we really reincarnate?

Aside from what the Hindus thought, let’s apply some common sense - the least common of the senses : if someone enters into the hall in which we are in for what appears to be the first time, and that person is perfectly familiar with the disposition of the furniture and everything in the hall, what would we say? It’s obvious that we would conclude that this person has been in here before, because if that weren’t the case, he wouldn’t have the knowledge he has.

How do we explain the facility with which some children for example, can play musical instruments, at four or five years old; or the facility of some sculptors who can sculpt naturally without any previous instruction?

There are modern theories that try to explain this with the argument of a collective unconscious, which, through a physiological evolution we inherit previously developped capacities. But obviously, this is less scientific than to think that man has this capacity because he had previously acquired it. For example, if someone, like what once happened in Italy with a peasant who started speaking Greek perfectly, it is because they remember something. And if furthermore they refer to concrete historical facts that they have never witnessed, it is because they remember something.

There exists in each of us a kind of a pre-existent experience, which at times manifests itself as a vague, imprecise sensation, sympathies, antipathies, anguish and premonitions that have no logical explanation...

Therefore, if it isn’t certain, it is at least possible that we have had previous lives. And where could we have lived? In another world or in this one?

If we are prepared to survive in this world, it’s because we can return to live in this world.

It is said that what disproves the theory of reincarnation is the demographic growth. Because if in antiquity, they estimated the world population at less than 50 million people, and today there are 4 billion people, what has happened? This is a good question. But those same ancients tell us that there are a fixed number of souls. And this fixed number of souls, when there is a large physical population on earth, have had a smaller celestial rest period, which is why the souls are more “material”, and tend to propagate materialism in the world. Something that coincides with what is currently occurring, where children do not have the innocence that they had in previous times.

Is it true what the ancient Hindus say, that when there are large masses of population, souls reincarnate very quickly, having little time to clean and to purify themselves?

And when there is a small world population, souls have a longer celestial life, and that is when the great mystics, the great philosophers are born; and the children continue to believe in fairy tales and gnomes up to an advance age.

This simple metaphysical conception changes all of our concepts: scientific, economical, political, social, international relations; and make us better, more generous. We come to understand that the beggar that we see at the corner of the street, is living an experience that we at best have already gone through, or will go through; and that we need to help him, not because it’s a good thing to do, but rather because he is our brother and traveling companion. Because we are all living a difficult, thorny road together, with its ups and downs. And on this path we must all keep in touch with that consciousness of unity.

All of these things have been in the heart of all religions; they aren’t in contradiction with any religion, since they were taught in some way by all of the Masters.

Jesus himself said: “We need to be reborn.”; a saying that has various and profound interpretations.

These things exist even in the mind of anyone who has a scientific view of life, or a positive view. Because what we have just expressed is scientific and is possible from the positive viewpoint.
It is necessary to reflect upon these considerations that affect us all: i.e. knowing whether we are going to be reborn.

I believe that we won’t be reborn. I believe that we continue to live. I believe that by saying, “being reborn”, would be like thinking that we die at one point. I don’t believe in death. Death doesn’t exist; it is an illusion invented to scare us. Nothing dies. Everything is transformed. Everything changes.

With the same Law that transforms Nature, God, or whatever you want to call it, is the one that will carry us to Life or to Death. What does it cost us to be born? As it cost us to be born, so will it cost us to die.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://nueva-acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=esp&ID=126

The Inverse Road

2008-03-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

When we read Historical writings, figures such as an Alexander, a Julius Caesar, a Napoleon, a Bolivar, are emphasized as having stood out from their backgrounds in such a way that They are the only ones that we see. It’s obvious that they didn’t dream, work and fight alone, but that matters little; their tremendous silhouettes cover the entire horizon of human accomplishment without leaving hardly any room for anything that doesn’t involve Them. Even when their collaborators, their enemies, their loves, their friends, are mentioned, they all appear insignificant, and if we know of them it is only because of their circumstantial contact with the figure of the Hero. If Xanthippe did not pour a bucket of water on the head of Socrates in public, her name would never have come down to us and we know -or care to know- little more of her than that anecdote.

But in the XVIIIth, XIXth, and our own century, there has developed what our own brillant Ortega has named “The Rebellion of the Masses”. The heroic figures have become diluted in an ever increasing company. Not to disregard the merits of this viewpoint, but they become joined with the many and so the tomb to the “Unknown Soldier” is today generally considered more important than the General that lead them. Political Parties and Unions have replaced the Hero as the center of power and the Individual is submerged in the mass to the point of being digested by it. In this disintegration of the Individual, and in this dissolution of the Hero, we lose sight of both.

Anonymity has replaced names and we are now more than anything, a number on a passport, a depersonalized unit that lives among many, an artificial element, the product of mass production, of assembly lines, like the most non-descript screw in our car, like the tin bottle cap of a soft drink.

Millions of us live in modern cities, yet we walk the dehumanized streets without greeting anyone, and the worse is that in reality we don’t really care to greet anyone. Everyone lives “their life”, but in reality, this egoistic attitude degenerates into a massifying attitude of not living any definite life other than letting oneself be pushed by the current of events, by the throngs of fashion and, little by little, we are left with an inner void since all of our human relationships are superficial. Nothing brings us to our inner depths and at times we even doubt if we have this “depth”: that is, if we are something more than a mass of flesh and bones moved by electrical impulses. From there to be converted into “robots” there is but a step. The most dangerous of steps. The step that brings to a final abyss an entire humanizing destiny that took millions of years to accomplish.

The mass in which we find ourselves immersed in has dirtied our Souls, modifying our tastes, imposing appearances, forcing attitudes. Each time we resemble each other more and more, but on the inside we are more and more distant and indifferent. Nothing stops us from trying to conform; we are never completely happy. Like a bunch of irrational and insensible machines, we are poisoning Nature with our by-products, disfiguring and debilitating it.

The massifying contamination is not only at a psychological level, it has also reached the physical and concrete level. We all use the same objects made on an assembly line, if any differences manage to stand out, it merely reveals the not very noble characteristic of having more money, of having accumulated more material power regardless of how it was obtained.
The time has come to take the inverse road.

We must first of all stop and reflect, becoming aware of the error we are committing, invert our forces, revise our points of view, overcome the massifying “taboos” that try to gear everything to the lowest level denominator. We must begin the spiritual vigil within ourselves and translate it into daily actions. To form the New Man, History needs to reconstruct the Hero, reassembling the whole from the innumerable pieces. Without underestimating anyone, giving everyone the natural opportunity to have rights, based on the obligations to the duties that we have.

We must reconstruct the Hero in order for everyone else to be a People rather than an amorphous mass; so that everyone can participate in the Glory of a Spiritual Peace, of a Wisdom, of an Equanimity, of a Humility of the Heart that only a Hero can feel and retransmit potentialized to all. When among Heroes, men grow, becoming valiant and unegotistic and women stop being objects and convert themselves into receptacles of Love, Beauty, and Spirituality. For that reason, everything is resumed in the Hero. Everyone then has the right to a humanization and a participation in the deeds of the Hero.

We would then return to being Men and Women in the true sense of the word... and the “humanity” of the robots will be left behind; with the anonymous crimes, the anonymous violence and the exploitation with bank accounts. The New Man, the one that participates in that “Heroism”, will erase all those blemishes from the Earth, building a better, more beautiful, more just World. A Natural World; decontaminated, highly Spiritual, without beggars that shame us, without middlemen that exploit us, without guerrillas that kill us, without politicos that prostitute us.

We have strayed from the path. It is time to take the inverse road.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://nueva-acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=fra&ID=89

Mental Forms

2008-03-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

“The All is Mind, everything in the Universe is mental.”

The Kybalion

This ancient - and always relevant - assertion that the Greeks extracted from much older Egyptian aphorism and which have come down to us through the versions that the Neoplatonists of Pergamo and Alexandria had conserved. These fragments had been commented and recommented upon many times with more or less success, has maintained a truthfulness that goes beyond the field of metaphysics and touches daily life, that which affects everyone at any moment.

Everyone of us and our surroundings experience perceivable reality according to how it is conceived. This does not change the Archetypes that wait for us at the end of the Path, of which Plato has brilliantly explained, however, our intention with this article is to refer to, not the Logos or Divine idea whose rudder governs the march of the Universe in an intelligent manner and that is reflected in the stars and the atoms, but rather to the human aspect that we are called upon to live, personally, within the limits of our time-space reality.

We mustn’t be egotistical, but we can’t avoid being egocentric. Protagoras said that “Man is the measure of all things” and by this he referred not only to human consciousness and the universe, but also to the physical body, which gave him the notion of the small and the great, of the near and the far. Microcosmic Man is Himself a living image of that Macrocosmic God which Is and Exists.

Any value capable of being understood and lived, really lived by each one of us, brings not so much an access to the Hidden Founts of Truth, but rather a relationship with our Self and that which can call our environment.

This however presents us with a double problem initially: When we are born into this life it’s evident that our environment already exists, and so we therefore become conscious of religious, political, scientific, artistic beliefs; social customs according to gender and condition; idiomatic expression according to the language of the country and the family wherein we develop. We taste different foods and drinks. We learn how to use instruments, from our own body to the daily machines and utensils for work or play that surround us. However ... before this pre-existing environment we can ask ourselves: “What about me, did I exist before being born? Where? How?...And if I didn’t exist, was I born with my body? Is my Self but a sum and combination of properties of matter, some of them unknown from a scientific standpoint?

The capacity to think perceptively gives reality to my environment. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that, as I have conceived myself, I am also forming reality? and if this is true, would not the existence of my Self depend on the existence of my surroundings?

This apparently logical question that has preoccupied the materialists so much is nothing but a crude sophism.

If it were certain that our existence depends on our surroundings and that our Self is not pre-existent, then all children born in similar conditions would necessarily be similar in all aspects. Therefore, if the only factor was the force of our environment, and if our Self was but a product of this environment, we would all come out of Nature’s “production line” the same, just like cars and planes do. But we aren’t things; we are beings. And the differences that appear in people raised in the same home and environment - profound differences and not tangential - demonstrate to us the pre-existence of a differentiated Self for each one of us. We think differently and therefore we feel things differently, we are different. There is no person who exactly the same as someone else.

Thus, upon birth, beyond the influence of the “habitat” the distinctive characteristics of each person manifests themselves. Our Self is an extremely complicated idea-form that has no equal. It is reasonable to think that we were formed by different experiences, in previous lifetimes, where we were again different from everyone else through the accumulation of millennium of experiences.

Our knowledge of history teaches us that the environments of specific eras and countries were distinctly different. And it follows that we ourselves, from a distinct distant past, make it that, with the differentiated relation with different vital scenarios, we cannot all be the same.
Taking this difference into account, the term “we” is nothing more than a relationship that is more or less harmonious or conflictual with others. Hence Plato’s concept of a society as an interrelation between different individuals. Each one of these individuals has his own concept of themselves and their environment. All attempts of homogenous massification is homogenous and painful.

For that reason we must care for the purity and nobility of our mental forms, since each thought that we carry or emit, has its own distinct dynamic emanated from that of our Self en relation to the non-Self or surroundings.

Profound ethics, an instinctive notion of the good - fruit of the accumulated karmic experience - persuades us to be not only good, but to surrounds ourselves with the best possible things. An essential and existentially good environment doesn’t do us any harm. It won’t hurt us or anyone else. And this environment doesn’t begin where it apparently first appears, with others, but rather inside of us, in a form of “sub-environment” that surrounds the Deeper Self.

We are inhabited by thousands of form-ideas that cause joys, pains, passions, aberrant distortions, lapses in the estimation of the value of things and men.

For a better understanding of the above-mentioned concepts, it’s useful to notice that the Esotericism of all times has conceived of man as being a perfect physical robot, but obeying at the same time to biological, vital, psychological, mental, intuitional and spiritual factors.

This septennary constitution allows for all of its part to be a reflection of the whole, that is that each one of the vehicles of man is also sevenfold, and we therefore have a Mind, which, according to the pedagogical framework of the great occultist H. P. Blavatsky, presents the following characteristics:

Higher Mind (Manas)

(1) MANAS-ATMA
Spiritual
(2) MANAS-BUDDHI
Intuitive
(3)MANAS-MANAS
The pure mind where the latent principles of Atma and Buddhi are reflected, constituting the causal body or Self.
Lower Mind (Kama-manas)

Antakarana or Bridge

(4) K.MAMAS-K.MANAS
Obscure Mind, seat of obsessions.
(5) ASTRAL-K.MANAS
Mind that gives form to desires.
(6) PRANIC-K.MANAS
Mind fortified by the breath of life
(7) DENSE-K.MANAS
Mind dealing with physical things

(1) The mental forms emanated from this Sub-body are of colors close to violet, with sharp and brilliant geometrical shapes; they have a last a long time by themselves and are related to heroic and mystico-philosophical themes.
(2) The mental forms emanated from this Sub-body are of colors close to silver, with clear and brilliant geometrical shapes with their edges shading into a brilliant light; they don’t last as long as the previous ones and they are related to religious themes.
(3) The mental forms emanated from this Sub-body are of colors close to blue, with clear, precise geometrical shapes but not very brilliant; they don’t last as long as the previous ones and they are related to the intellect and pure reason. Speculative philosophy. Pure sciences.
(4) The mental forms emanated from this Sub-body are of colors close to green, with clear, solid and relatively simple; geometrical shapes; they don’t last as long as the previous ones and they are related to concrete, technical, and mechanical speculative themes. Applied sciences.
(5) The mental forms emanated from this Sub-body are of colors close to brilliant red, with unstable geometrical shapes that tend to return upon themselves; they don’t last as long as the previous ones but they repeat themselves and are related to exaltations, emotions, sensations, and pleasures and pains.
(6) The mental forms emanated from this Sub-body are of colors close to orange combined with blood red; with curved and spiral shapes constantly renewing themselves. Their temporal duration is meager, but in constant and circular renewal engendering many others, give a sensation of continuity, like the impression that running water gives from a distance, giving live and heat to the others.
(7) The mental forms emanated from this Sub-body are of hot and dark colors that form a polychromatic interlacing, which are, in reality, like baskets that contain all the other mental energies and concretize them into geometrical forms that tend towards of a stability of a mechanical compensation. They don’t for very long, but their presence is clear and well-defined.
As the mental forms suffer the universal “boomerang” effect, they tend to return to their point of departure, especially if they don’t hit the “target” the were aimed at. That’s why we have the millennium-old recommendations to encourage good thoughts and to discourage bad ones, since aside from the impacts that they can provoke in the outer surroundings, they inexorably return, and many times increased, hit and nest within our inner environment, that is, in the very mind that generated them. The Orientals would say that this is Karma, but we mustn’t understand it as being a simple arithmetical type of Karma, but rather a vital kind.

When a seed is plated, it doesn’t change into another kind of seed, but rather a plant that contains a hundredfold copies similar to the original one because, planted in the earth, it absorbs from it the elements that help it to develop. It is a multiple echo of the original and unique sound.
This capacity to multiply means that the Ego is assailed by thousands of foreign, native, and mixed mental forms. The untrained will of today’s individuals, turn them into the playthings of these mental forms and thus, from the selection of toothpaste to that of a political position or a form of life, they are constantly moved by the great waves of the multitudinous ocean that controls the circumstances, which are both the reflection of combinations of different previous situations, already established when the individual arrives on the scene and of hidden will powers that are not always human.

Behind actions that are apparently purely human are hidden forces of Nature like great Elemental and it is therefore suicide to weaken people’s willpower. The iron discipline of the old monasteries and the old military quarters were not as stupid as we are today lead to believe. They forged Men, in the best spirit of that word. A marching procession or troop is the antithesis of the herd, of the gluttonous pack that chomps here and there the first thing that comes out the ground that has been fertilized by its own excrement. The spirit of Mysticism, of the exaltation of deep ethical values, generosity, courage, and the control of one’s body, create mental forms that, by returning upon society and upon its own projectors, ennoble and purify all, repelling the pestilent spirits that promote physical and metaphysical illness.

The lack of these disciplines allow, like terrible vampires, the worst mental forms to appear, some have been asleep for centuries in the obscure corners of what today we would call the “collective unconscious” and attack those with the weakest will power, weakening them further and corrupting them. That is where the tendencies towards drug use, irrational violence, anguish, the incapacity to work, and the lack of power to make redemptive decisions. come from.
Those affected, like small children, are always asking for things, but never offer anything. Lacking in vitality and without will power, they drag themselves and are dragged into the worst of their slaveries, which is the servile offspring of fear and father of all errors.

True liberty is the obedience to the harmonious laws that govern Nature. That is ecology, and not the politicized form that we see in the streets. This liberty is the source of the higher mental forms, those that, returning upon its producers, cover them with halos of saintliness and heroism. These characteristics make them beautiful to the sight of the Gods.

The shield of power and saintliness protects one from the larvae and dragons engendered by the moral nighttime that we are passing through.

The sword of will cuts the head of the dragons of fear, corruption, and physical and moral misery. From honorable work, from the courage to not only to claim one’s own rights but also to also to assume one’s own duties, from the goodness and humility of heart, from the healthy joy that distances us from the howling of beasts, from oration which is talking with God and from individual and collective courage in facing adversity, from the upright concentration on the best in each of us, are born the most splendid and beneficial mental forms.

That is what being an Acropolitan is: to dream and build that High City, that Acropolis, made with mental forms of Will, Love, and Justice.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://nueva-acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=fra&ID=69

Should we believe in presages?

2008-02-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

Derived from the Latin praesagium, presages refers to the knowledge of future events by way of visible signals or phenomena, invisible to the average person, but always perceivable and significant for the one who has developed the gift of prophecy. This divine or simply parapsychological gift, has forever accompanied the History of Humanity.

Man, fearful of misfortunes and anxious about his happiness, has called upon diviners, mages, astrologers, “mediums”, in order to unveil something about his individual or collective future.

Even at the end of the XXth century, despite the general skepticism, presages and prophecies continue to have an enormous psychological weight.

During my last trip to France, a few months ago, I was able to observe how much people were worried about the Pope's upcoming visit to Lyon.[1] The reason was because of a prophecy of Nostradamus that said: "May the Roman Pontiff approach the city where two rivers flow. There your blood will be spilled. Yours and that of those close to you, when the rose blooms." It happens that the city of Lyon has two rivers flowing nearby, the Rhone and the Saone, and that roses are very abundant in that city. They didn't fail to mention that the flower is one that is included in the symbol of the Socialist Party.

At the time I am writing this, in the end of September, the seventh successor to the Holy parish of Ars has declared that the prophecy has already been accomplished and that John Paul II runs no greater danger than that of the terrorism that is plaguing France. Father Thevenard made reference to Pius VI, who died of a pulmonary infection that caused him to cough up blood, in 1799, in Valence, a locality neighboring Lyon, with the two rivers flowing nearby, and in a building that has a famous rose garden.

The enigmatic and learned Frenchman whom we know as “Nostradamus” lived between the years 1503 and 1566. His Centurie Astrologiche and other writings, some of which are today considered apocryphal, project a series of future events through some 550 years after his death. His accounts are so obscure, that the different scholars have failed to agree on practically anything of what is written; and so, some consider him a genuine seer who foretold inexorable facts, and others, for a delusional who played games with words that depending on how you look at them, can relate to one person or another, from different eras. But, generally speaking, if we take his words literally and don’t obscure them even more with our commentaries, we are faced with a series of descriptions that are truly prophetic, although punctual and limited.

For those who are surprised that a Christian and Catholic clergyman would make references to these things as if they believed in them, I would like to point out that the entire history of the Church of Rome, and other forms of Christianity, is full of instances of presages, and not a few Popes - such as Sylvester II and Gregory VII - have dedicated their hours with marvelous perseverance to the study of the so-called Occult Sciences. A subtle difference between the “prophecies”, that come from God, and the “presages”, that are inspired by the devil, has saved them and many other clergymen from the bonfires of the Inquisition.

The Bible itself categorizes nine types of divination:
1. Meonen, as Moses called it: is judiciary astrology or apotelesmatica; this is practised through the inspection and observation of all the stars and meteorological phenomena.
2. Menaschech, that is, augury, according to the Vulgate and almost all the interpreters.
3. Mecaschep, which is evil spells with occult or pernicious practices or ceremonies, as indicated in the Vulgate and the Septuagint.
4. Ithoberon, or the equivalent: enchantments
5. The Oracles, those who interrogated the Pythian spirits.
6. Indeoni, charms and magic.
7. Necromancy, or the invocation and interrogation directed toward the deceased.
8. Rhabdomancy, which uses wands, referred to by Hosea, a minor prophet.
9. Hepatoscopy, through the inspection or examination of the liver.

Widespread belief in this subject has existed in the highest of cultures, from Egypt to China, and from the Etruscans to the Mayans. They all believed that they had the possibility of knowing the future, and this belief was so firm that, during the entire period of the Roman Empire, even after its split into the Western and Eastern Empires, and even down to the Byzantine Empire, it was prohibited on penalty of death to make divinations concerning the future of the emperor.

Herodotus, the so-called “father of History”, narrates endless cases, like that of the oriental king who, having been foretold by the diviners that he will die because of a wagon, prohibited any wagon to circulate in his territory; he died in a palace revolt, nailed to his throne by a sword ... that carried on its handle the figure of a wagon.

These and many other examples lead us to the reflection that heads this article: Can we believe in presages?

Is the future already written and inexorable? And if that is the case, what truth is there to free will and the freedom of man?

Let's try to answer these questions from a philosophical point of view.

The most ancient teachings as well as the current discoveries and theories on the constitution of the Universe point to the existence of a metaphysical force - comparable to our concept of will - that directs all phenomena in an intelligent manner and gives them specific characteristics of the natural laws, in such a way that a finality that includes the actual mechanical structures of the Cosmos is evident. There is a path for all things and a pre-established, preconceived order and discipline, that excludes all possibility of accident and replaces this with a causal harmonic relation between the causes and the effects, which is in turn the cause of other posterior effects.

Our civilization’s great technical advances have not been accomplished contrary to these natural laws, but rather obeying them and using the elements according to their natural characteristics. It is good to clearly point this out. An airplane does not carry hundreds of people thousands of meters high by going against the physical laws of Nature, but rather in docile obedience to them and combining them together in a predetermined manner. Inventors don’t “invent” anything; they simply discover and take advantage of what was previously unknown, but not non-existent. The only novelty can be the combination of pre-existing elements in Nature in an intelligent manner, to which are given a finality that we call “invention”.

Energy has existed within the atom since the beginning of time; men, with their investigations, have learnt to free it - something that, furthermore, occurs in nature, except with distinct, similar, or equal rhythms, at some place and time of the universal manifestation-. It is the understanding and the application of this time-space relation that gives man the possibility to direct the phenomenon according to the course of nature.

These observations give us a double possibility: that of a cosmic ordering, and the human capacity to discover the laws that govern them, using them in virtue of an inherent will that, ultimately, is an aspect of the cosmic will; since nothing comes from nothing.
The concept of creation is once again being considered a revelation.

The observation of a harmonious and moving Universe gives us the perception of a universal plan that must necessarily encompass every particular plan.

From this we can deduce what the Hindu philosophers thousands of years ago, called, Sadhana, the path of life; Dharma, which is the law that governs it; and Karma, the conjunction of actions and reactions that are produced in its bosom.

How then would we be able to change one thread of our destiny? Taking into account what Plato called obedience to the nature of the universal laws, we would discover that obedience implies a certain liberty that allows man to exercise his capacity to discern and to search for the truth. The apparent contradiction between obedience and liberty, looked at logically, is a fallacy; that is to say: something which has the appearance of reality but is not real. The error lies in our tendency to work with values that we think are absolute, but are in fact only relative, as firm as they may seem at a given moment. All of our concepts of large and small, new and old, far and near, are but illusions born from our egocentrism, which gives value to things according to our physical size, the duration our life, or the place where we happen to be.

Since it is evident that there is a path in which all events progress - something that would legitimize presages - we can’t discount that the wise man, with his predictions, can, without contrarying the flow of life, but rather adroitly navigating in it, give certain guidelines that, unless some unknown or unforeseen higher force alters it, will lead him from one side of the shore to the other.

What makes true presages become inexorable is our own lack of knowledge, the unbending program which we make of our own life and, more importantly, our incapacity to react towards unforeseen circumstances.

Therefore, it isn’t possible to change the things which have been planned by destiny and determined by our individual karma; but we can deal with the new circumstances with more or less adroitness, in the search for a basic happiness that belongs to everyone.

Yes .. we can believe in presages, but we must also believe in ourselves and in the Grace of God, who knows, better than anyone, what is really appropriate for our soul and for the destiny of the world.

Let’s banish fear. As the emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius said: What can happen to man that isn’t proper to man?

[1] October 4-7, 1986.

Jorge Angel Livraga

Translator's note - Marcus Aurelius Book 5, 18. Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear.

Book 10, 20 - That is for the good of each thing, which the universal nature brings to each. And it is for its good at the time when nature brings it.

http://acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=esp&ID=119

Rowing against the current

2008-02-19T18:22:00.000-08:00

“The difference between a tree trunk floating on the water and a boat carved from the same wood is that a boat has oars and can row against the current.”
Dr. Sri Ram

I heard those words from his own mouth, in my now distant youth. That phrase is not part of any of his lectures. I don’t know if he used it in any of his books. It came out spontaneously during a conversation.

I have often reflected on this, and when the time came to give form to the highest Ideals in a School of Philosophy in the classical tradition, the parable of the tree trunk and the boat permeated my every thought, feeling and action.

For the most part, men and women are like tree trunks thrown into the river of Life and at first they enter it whole only to later become battered and wet, drifting endlessly, carried by the current or by the branches of the current that the powers of this world have deviated! Away they go! Hitting each other in senseless violence, dirty and muddy, without direction or destination, until they disintegrate into splinters and disappear from the surface in this ever-running river, never knowing where it comes from nor where it is going.

The poor dislocated trunks, uprooted, cut, wretched, carried from one side to the other, barely resisting the current with their own weight! The somber flock drifts, the cracking sounds ring out in their endless journey, and yet … so tired! During the day, the sun reveals the dark, rotten bark, and at night, the host of shadows flows horizontally on and, only rarely, does one lift its end towards the stars.

The river of logs!

More and more of them every time, they collide, hurt each other, break each other… The river of logs! How I have meditated on this!

However, throughout the years, I have learned the almost forgotten techniques that allow to help and lighten the mass of wood, that wood that we are all made of: Some quick chisel strokes applied on the surface of the log, and later hot coals, repeating the action constantly. This experience, although inspired by the great Masters of Humanity, is always painful and infinitely long. We must dig to the deepest recesses, where the egoisms and cowardice enlace their twisting fibers, and the illusion makes you believe that you are the log, and that you are destroying yourself. Nonetheless, the persevering “artisan” continues his work, pushed by his higher will power, stronger than all the whining of the half decomposed matter.

Little by little, what was up till then but a simple tree trunk is transformed into a boat. A sharp stern and a round bow begin to take shape. What was once a wound, is now hollowed out, a smooth dwelling for the Travelling Soul. . Flexible oars have been made of the remnants, which can be used to row or to steer. With immense patience the rough sides are smoothed down, until they become a light and solid hull.

And... so we have made a boat!

The multitude of logs look at it with a mix of amazement and revulsion: they find it empty, insubstantial, useless, funny, dangerous, despicable! The fact is, it’s no longer a log… it’s a boat! If that wasn’t enough, it can even manage to row against the current! And that is unforgivable! Not being in style, not changing colors along with the flow of the mud? Having one’s own color and sailing above the mire, barely skimming over it?… That’s inconceivable!

And its strange crew members?

They say that we aren’t all alike. If we were, we could all be mistaken together without hope of helping each other, that equality doesn’t exist in Nature, and it is neither possible nor desirable. They say that “healthy” differences embellish one another, and that they tear us away from boredom and folly. They also say that the different religions are the adaptations, in space and time, of a same Message which is why there aren’t any better of worse than another, because, aside from this brief Message, the rest has been added through ignorance and the appetites of men…And that they’ve copied each other for thousands of years.

They assert that they don’t believe in God, but they know of Its existence, and that It is evident. All one has to do is know this and travel the path towards discovering it. They say that the soul is immortal and pure, and that it mustn’t be confused with the costumes and masks that it puts on periodically. That, if there is such a thing as grace, it is through the redemption inherent in the law of action and reaction, and that these are mechanical laws of Nature: He who sows wheat will sooner or later reap wheat, and he who sows thorns will only reap thorns.

Miracles as such don’t exist, only different planes of knowledge. Phenomena are of secondary importance. The Babylonian priest who dazzled people with his little lightning bolts that jumped from one hand to the other today would be called an electrician. And Saint Patrick: a chemist who knows what happens when water is poured over white phosphorous or quicklime.

The crew of the vessel has no need to deceive others. Step by step, they seek and find the truth. They put their strength to their oars, and they manage to distinguish things that others do not see, because they're rowing against the mainstream. They scale the waters up to the pure and unpolluted sources. They have enthusiasm in their souls and a love of laughter and beauty.

Cacaphonic noises bother them. They like the beautiful melodies of Strauss, the cathedrals of light and shadow of Wagner and the intimate sonatas of Mozart. They do not pretend to see panoramic visions behind the mix of eyes, noses and tails of modern painters. They prefer to walk in the snow of Goya, to gaze into the gray skies of Velasquez, to catch the crystalline tears of El Greco, or again to lose themselves in the fantastic streets of the murals of Pompeii.

They don't believe that drugs are good; they are, on the contrary, something bad because those who abuse them are turned into degenerate beasts, stealing and killing in order to continue consuming them. Nor do they believe in the dirty drunkenness of high-pitched screams and low-pitched belches.

They believe in a harmonious and vital order that surpasses the blind mechanism of programs manufactured by others. They believe in freedom, as long as there are people who appreciate and respect that of others. They believe in will, goodness and justice. They believe that a world without these virtues is nothing but a mass of mud that must be given harmonious forms by overcoming the resistance of gross matter. They believe in a new and better world… But in order for it to appear on our horizon, there must be a lot of new and better rowers. Those who abandon themselves to the river of life amid the weaknesses and lamentations are inexorably carried toward their physical, psychological and mental destruction.

They believe in a science that is at the service of mankind, the animal world, the vegetable world, and especially the planet in a global sense: she is our cosmic house and we are overwhelming and unbalancing her. They believe that structures that are old and useless should give way, in the natural renewal of Life, to younger and stronger ones, without any complexes or limitations that have the stench of rottenness and are nothing but cadavers whose limbs the galvanizing force of money and power cause to contract in a horrible simulacrum of life.

Above all, the members of the crew believe in themselves and the boat that they have built.

When they pass by while going up the river of life, many men and women who are young at heart and with an awakened mind are inspired to start to work and transform their logs into boats, in order to live the wonderful spiritual adventure of rowing against the current.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://www.nueva-acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=fra&ID=17

The Esoteric Ages of Man

2008-01-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

With this topic, as with so many others, it would be rash to overly generalize. Each human being has his own particular destiny which is like a rope made with threads of many different colors, tensions, lengths and life cycles.

They influence the decisions that everyone makes in facing all sorts of opportunities as well the mysterious factors that go beyond all “horoscopes”, circumstances, and education. In all the Mystery Religions of Antiquity, from Sumer to Etruria, this “X factor” - as different thinkers of the XXth century have called it - isn’t measurable nor is it predictable... We know that its evident effects exist, but we don’t know what it is.

According to Homer and Virgil, this Ultimate Will is above, not only men, but also above the Gods and all that we are able to conceive ... the intelligible world, which paradoxily has an irrational root or a para-rational root, which, practically speaking, is the same.

However, in order to facilitate a certain understanding, esotericism differentiates the years that a person can live into cycles of seven.

Up to 7 years: In general, there is a gradual descent of the spiritual, mental, and psychological Principles. There exists a kind of “Guardian Angel” that oversees the entrance of Souls into their incarnation and “softens” the shock of the impact with the world in which it has to live. Parents, family, and educators play an important role. Children are, exceptions withstanding, flexible beings who respond to the incentives of punishment and reward; they need a constant authority and control that allows for an instrumental learning process. If born in a Christian family, they will be Christian and if in a Jewish one, they will be Jewish, etc. Their contact with the social environment is a “vaccine” that will help them to survive future encounters. They need care, which is not weakness or prudery.

Up to 14 years: Having survived childhood, they enter a “transition” stage and, through the use of fantasy and imagination, human beings are introduced to the world of adults which they do not accept nor reject completely. They’re experimenting. They need to be allowed, within measure, to try things and to make mistakes. Their own Spirit is beginning to manifest itself and this creates the images of apparent rebelliousness.

Up to 21 years: Having passed the preceding phase, the Spirit manifests itself more strongly and the personality with its specific potential becomes more defined. One enters into a phase of wholeness ... although immature. The sexual roles become more defined.

Up to 28 years: The Spirit has manifested itself and the path for the rest of one’s life becomes clear. Everything takes a concrete form and one’s nature tends to impose impose itself at all levels.

Up to 35 years: One achieves a fully defined formalization and spirituality conquers or falls; there are no deep changes in this regard. One is now walking on chosen paths and, aside for small adjustments of one’s fields of interests and centers of invention, what it is now possible to modify is the speed. Although it might not appear that way, the possibilities of change have been left behind and one can only strengthen or weaken aspects of the personality according to the strength of one’s Spirit.

One is in the middle of one’s life expectancy, at the summit of the mountain of this lifetime and one begins to perceive landscapes and strengths more clearly and this incites action and curiosity. The already existing elements are combined and recombined in a “second youth”.

Up to 42 years: The effects of what we call the “second youth” is perceivable and become instrumental. A need is felt for success, conquests, acquisitions. Towards the end of the cycle, one begins to descend “the biological mountain” and conflicts between the Spirit, the Soul, and the Personality appear. This is where the difference between the brave and the cowardly is seen. The challenge of life is stated and restated.

Up to 49 years: A sentiment that had remained practically latent manifests itself: the hurry to accomplish things, and these things will be according to the nature of each person and their level of spirituality or materialism. Individual experience has been strongly sifted, influencing one’s actions, ideas, and sentiments. The body, for its part, shows the characteristics inherent to lost youth. This is not always accepted and causes this age to be especially dangerous for physiological and mental balance.

Up to 56 years: A double psychological flight begins; one is a flight backwards, the other forwards. One remembers the “good times” and at the same time, projects oneself with force towards the future. The present appears fleeting and dull. One almost needs to hold on to it order have something to strongly cling to. One’s positions become more radical and mature. If one has chosen the spiritual path, one then enters into a very fruitful period and if not, into a simulacrum of new creations ... which are the same as before, only much more defined and solid, ... and static.

Up to 63 years: The “decline” of life is becoming evident and all of us, in one way or another, try to leave behind “things accomplished” that give individual and collective security. The level in which the radicalization of beliefs are projected into genuinely useful works depends on the of degree of culture, character, and spirituality. Congeniality becomes more and more difficult and it is avoided at the same time as being needed, at times in traumatic fashion.

Up to 70 years: Certain spiritual principles will withdraw or be accentuated according to the degree that they have been exercised. This is the final phase, the “brooch” that can be of gold or of iron. The body begins a deterioration that puts one’s temperance to the test. The idea of death, in its different acceptations, is constantly on one’s mind. For some, it is a final incentive, and for others, the doorway to desperation, resignation, rebellion (authentic, this time) which can provoke a confrontational situation with oneself and one’s physical, psychic, mental or spiritual surroundings.

If one survives beyond this age, all prognostics can be forwarded, since the elderly can become solid rocks of marvelous examples .... or stubborn enemies of everyone and everything. In general, a great solitude is felt, either golden or opaque. The majority don’t understand the youngest generations and so they quarrel with them, envying in some way their youth. Now, everything depends on the life that one has left behind. Certain Laws of Nature, absolutist and dogmatic, make one hastily reap what one has sown, in an inexorable manner.

If the end comes through an especially long illness, characteristics of clearly infantile character end up reappearing. If not, or if one’s spiritual strength is very great, the Spirit will give its most beautiful splendors as a final farewell, penetrating anew into an intimate and mysterious reality, like that of small children. Although one is of this world, one no longer lives in it.
We intentionally avoided the psycho-somatic analysis’ that are in vogue and the terminology of our times. We don’t believe in a psychoanalysis that doesn’t rediscover the keys of a constructive, optimistic, and true psychosynthesis.

Furthermore, all that has been explained, although explaining in broad lines the march of time within the life of Man - englobing both sexes in order to abbreviate - we insist on the fact that it is a very broad outline as such a topic cannot be so compressed and that every human being is a world, a mystery, a distinct and unrepeatable reality, absolutely singular.

This does not disregard reincarnation, rather it confirms that if the chain is one, its links are innumerable, different and the association of similar pieces does not take away the flexibility of the whole; that is why we compare this to a chain and not a rigid bar. Space and time are coordinates that interrelate but do not combine together, although they are identical in terms of Being; in terms of existence they are at once marvelously different, opposite, and complementary.

But such are the Old Teachings that, properly meditated upon, can be useful for those who, being philosophers, are seeking an in-depth self-knowledge.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=esp&ID=55

The Mysterious Art of Winning

2008-01-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

The philosophical quest is akin to being straight as a spear that travels against the wind, through the fog, beyond the known and the unknown. To be a philosopher means to be a lover of Truth, a lover of Wisdom, someone who places above all things the search for this Wisdom . They might not have superior intelligence, but they are convinced that they will arrive at the goal that they have resolved to attain; they are noble people who try with all their might to arrive at what will only be revealed further on.

The topic that I’m going to discuss today is the mysterious or difficult Art of Winning. When I say winning, I’m not referring to defeating anybody, breaking down doors, throwing down walls, feeling that others are weaker than we are, but rather something much more profound. Many years ago, I had a Master who told me that the Art of Happiness resides in achieving objectives, but not at the expense of others, not based on the unhappiness of others; in a certain manner, the Art of Winning consists in being able to achieve one’s goals; not, however, by using others as stepping stones, climbing on the heads of the weak, trampling upon those who are apparently blocking our path, but rather in a very different manner, using all of our heart and all our strength. What is this difficult or mysterious Art of Winning?

There are people who, it seems, are born with a lucky star and everything turns out right for them. There are others who, in turn, have a very difficult time with every thing they undertake. We also sometimes encounter the Elect of History, who with their very presence can make veritable miracles happen.

I remember a stay in Greece, two or three years ago; in Macedonia, to be precise. During that stay tears came to my eyes. I was in the ruins of Filipopolis and was reading some fragments of the letters of Filipo Sother. Filipo Sother narrated how he and his countrymen were marching with Alexander, and during that time, they could accomplish miracles, they managed to do marvels, but when Alexander died, they could only do no more than small wonders. They wanted to be great, but they couldn’t help being, in some way, mediocre and small. They could not say that they were sons of Amon, but rather sons of men and women.

How many times, my dear friends, how many times have we seen ourselves wanting to accomplish a feat, something marvelous, trying to advance in such a way that everyone will see us, follow us, and yet, we only succeed in making small steps; how many times have we wanted to sing like a blackbird, how many times have we wanted to fly; and yet, only small sounds came out of our mouths, or we find ourselves oblidged to retrace our steps, walking and walking towards that horizon that never ends. We then ask, with all our heart, as philosophers, in what does the Art of Winning consist of? Why do some win while others are unable to?

Perhaps, my dear friends, life is like this microphone wire that I have in my hands; one doesn’t know exactly what length it is, and so we need to be prepared and attentive in order to notice when we arrive at the end. In some way, adversity lets us know that we’ve reached the end.

The act of winning, therefore, does not mean that everyone should convert themselves into an Alexander, because we can’t all be Alexander, nor can Alexander be each one of us. Everybody is who they are, and the Art consists of being who we really are, in our reality, in our own dimension, no matter what our size.

All the Ancient Cultures, the old Civilizations, had what were called systems of Initiation, in which a person's potential is awakened. In general, we have a fairly mistaken notion of what the ancient Initiations were, we think that they consisted of, shall we say, recipes, formulas; that is, Pythagoras or Plato presents himsef to us, and says: “You need to get up at such and such time, eat an egg in such a way and later, sleep in such manner.”. Unfortunately, no, apparently it isn’t that easy, because if it were, many would have arrived at the end of the path. No, it isn’t that easy, but rather much more human.

Today we all conceive things through formulas, we perceive all successes and solutions in terms of systems. If something goes wrong, it’s the failure of the political system, if we have economical problems, it’s the failure of the administration, and we end up asking ourselves at a certain point: What about the human factor? In a certain way, are we not responsible? How far does the value of systems go? Up to what point does the true value reside in that God-loving spark that is man?

Mankind possesses a fundamental value, that is why the ancients did not try to communicate to him extraordinary truths, extremely mysterious things, but rather tried to clean him, to cleanse away all the things of this world, to rid him of his own animality, of his fears, of everything that can impede his progress, so that he can blossom from the inside out, like the white lotus, from the very heart of things, and to rise up to that epopteia of achieving the end of each thing, which is represented in columns which petals open up many meters from the ground. No column opens its petals at the bottom, they all do it at the top. The ancients have left us a legacy of teachings on all of this, archived in its imagery.

Remember the great temple of Karnak. In the sanctuary of Amon, where they have the petals on the columns, the ones that are slightly more withdrawn appear to be closed lotus buds; the ones that are closer are completely open to the vertical Sun. It is an eternal teaching that invites us to get closer to ourselves, to that center of power that we all have inside of us.

The ancient civilizations generally had four major groups of Trials: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Exoterically, that is, outwardly, they really dealt with earth, water, air and fire, but esoterically they deal with certain components of our personality, that is, with our physical body, our energetic vehicle , our psychological vehicle, and our mental vehicle, from which spring all the things that we receive, obtain and give. The Trials themselves however, really were of a physical character and they were real, very real.

The remains of an initiatic pit has been discovered near Syracuse -I have seen it - in which there are a series of lateral holes. When the candidate was lowered into the pit, a very dark pit, by a small stairway, hands come out from the holes that push him while invisible voices shout at him: “You’re going to fall!” Imagine the fear of the disciple, who doesn’t know that there’s a net waiting, so that, no matter what, he wouldn’t get killed. Today it is practically all filled up and you can only see a few meters deep, but perhaps it used to be much deeper. Imagine him gripping tightly to the rock, fighting to conquer his fear and trying to continue forward one step more.

Winning would not be in that moment to arrive at the end of the stairway; that would be the final victory. Winning is done step by step, climbing one step, then the next one, and the next one. One of the great mistakes that we make is that, when faced with a stairway, we look at the whole and we plan on climbing the whole stairway or not at all. That is not the adequate psychological position for facing adversity. Rather, we need to plan on overcoming it step by step. What is my immediate problem? This step, not that one or the other! We maintain an exageratedly high viewpoint, something that happens on occasion to many idealists, to many spiritualists; it is easy to stumble on the first steps and fall into the abyss. We need to know where we want to go, but step by step, slowly, and without, so to say, overly planning it. If we know how to stretch out our hand, there will always be some good Angel, real or imagined, who will grab our right hand and help us along the path.

Everyone knows that the best swords are made with strong hammer strokes, and pass from hot to cold, in a genuinely brutal manner. Don’t we also need to be tempered? To receive the blows of life like the sword that receives strokes on the blade. Someone who has seen at some time a blade being worked on, knows that together with the hammering you can hear another sound. It’s the cry of the metal that is being flattened. The sword screams yet survives, screams and survives, screams and survives; until in the end that iron that was nothing more than a base and simple metal, has changed, through the blows - and for having been immersed in the cold waters or in the mysterious alloying substances, to a bare sheet of steel, which then acquires hardness, sharpness, and flexibility. Wouldn’t that be in some way similar to our own shaping in life?
I was reading in the New Acropolis Magazine[1] that just came out here in Spain, precisely an article on swords. In it, there is a Japanese tale in which snow falls on a cherry tree and on a willow. The branch of the cherry tree, which is very rigid, receives the weight of snow again and again, until it breaks; the willow, which is more flexible, receives the weight of snow and bends under its weight until the snows falls off and that willow lifts up again. We need to apply this at an inner level, to understand that we fall simply in order to lift ourselves up again. Nothing falls definitively, because everything in this world is temporary. Everything has a relative value, our triumphs and our failures. With that humility of the heart, we can continue to advance. If we manage to gain the dominion over those four elements of Nature in our inner being - the so-called Earth, Water, Air and Fire - we may not accomplish miracles, we aren’t sons of Amon, at least not directly, but we can accomplish certain marvels.

There are some easy exercises that can help us in trying to understand. Take any bottle filled with water and hold it upright with your arm outstretched horizontally. At first it seems like something very easy to do, who can’t hold up one liter, but astime passes and the accumulation of the weight and the position of our arm becomes more painful, we feel the weight more and more, and it feels like we are carrying a cow.

Let’s try something different, let’s put our Will into practice. For example, you can make your eyes and your mind count the specific number of light bulbs that are on the ceiling (without letting go of the bottle). You’ll see that we can resist the pain much easier if we keep our mind off of it.

It’s the same for things in life. If our mind clings to each problem, to that small daily death that comes upon us, the fear that we haven’t cleaned away in our inner self because we are not in the Vth century b.c,. will make us unable to resist the least bit of impact of adversity.

We must therefore try to raise that hand, freeing it a little from the things of this world, investing our Will; a Will that should not be ostentatious, but must walk alone and naturally.

When you face a serious adversity, always try to resist a minute longer, don’t think about resisting for an hour, a day, a year, all your life; no, no, a minute longer, just a minute longer, and afterwards another minute longer, and thus, little by little, you will have accumulated greater lengths of time. The power of our mind is awesome. Try another trial - measure the psychological duration of a minute. When the dial reaches its zenith again, when it again completes its circle, imagine receiving a great prize, an immense joy (everyone can imagine the joy that they want). You will notice how slowly the hand seems to move, it almost seems to move backwards. Now let’s try the opposite - let’s imagine that when the hand of the clock comes around a bomb will explode under us, you will see how fast it seems to go, second by second, some would think that the clock has gone haywire. Nonetheless, the clock is still marking the same instants with the same rhythm.

What has changed? Our perspective. If we wish for something with an overly passionate fervor, it will appear to us infinitely distant.

We must know how to give to life the value that it really has; we will therefore obtain a much more truthful dimension to all that happens to us. Today, generally we chase after money, fame, recognition, a better car, a bigger apartment, the latest refrigerator, the one that makes round ice cubes ... we are thus always in tension, nothing satisfies us, because it always appears that we have too little, that we need something new. That is the great myth of the consumer mentality that has been ingrained in our soul, and is one of the worst forms of materialism.

Let’s learn to be satisfied with simple things. I’m not saying to renounce having more, I’m simply saying to be in peace with our own heart, and afterwards to look at what way we can prosper a little more. The secret is to really know what it is we can do, how we can do it, and then put all our attention and all our strength in it.

In truth, we have more strength than we think. Each one us, no matter how small, has great possibilities. Some will think: “I’m not going to write poetry because who is going to publish them? I’m not that good.” Let’s lose some of that feeling of comparison, of competition, that kind of insane sport in which we have been placed in. Let’s get away from that mentality and start doing things for their own sake. If poetry comes to our soul, if poetry descends upon us like birds descend into their nests, receive them, maintain them, let them fly; it doesn’t matter if they don’t get published!

When printing didn’t exist, what did the poets do? In the time of Sappho, what did that sublime poetess do to bring her creations to the whole world and to have them come down to the Middle Ages, where they were unfortunately destroyed? There weren’t any presses, nor publishers, all they had was poems, and these poems were shared from hand to hand, little by little. We don’t need great mediums for our creations to be discovered. Of the books that I have written, the one I like the best was started when I was nineteen, and I never thought it would be published, I simply wrote it because I felt like it.

How many have within themselves books, messages, treasures, characters? We have to pull them out, we need to have the strength to extract them, to show them to the world, a world thirsty for spontaneous things. The world is fed up of being spoken to through the framework of the systems, and wants to be spoken to with heart, man to man, woman to woman, person to person; like the old Roman feeling of concord, heart to heart. That isn’t equality, no - equality is sterile- but rather it is something that complements one another, like the teeth of gears, which enters the hole that is left free by the one leaving it... With this tooth entering the holes left free by the ones leaving it exists the possibility to transmit strength: spiritual strength, physical strength, and what’s more, inner strength... the inner strength that lifts its arms in Victory, that final Victory that awaits us all, through the little accomplishments, those that need to be done on a daily basis, that need to be continuous and that fill our hearts with faith and hope.

Perhaps you like to paint, perhaps you like to draw, do it! It doesn’t matter if people acknowledge them or not. Beyond the people, beyond our surroundings, there is another Judge, a very great Judge, so great that we are unable to determine its size. A Judge so good that we can’t conceive it, and so just, that beyond acts, he can read the hearts that have inspired the acts.
This great Judge, in some way, will extend its cape over us and shelter our little achievements, our little illusions: the verses that we have never written, the drawings that we have never done, the loves that we have never had, the opportunities that have escaped us, but that live in some magical form in that world of sublime redemption, and which accompanies us, throughout the millennium, towards an inner and total realization.

Each one us, even the smallest, even the one who feels the most diminished, even the one who feels the most alone, has the capacity for Victory. Each one of us has the capacity to walk and advance towards those small successes, those small steps that will carry us forward little by little.

We don’t need any formulas, nor any special supports; we can always continue moving forward, perfecting ourselves more and more. Each one of us must look for our own Light, our own place, and if we are happy where we are, great, and if we aren’t happy, then we can be so somewhere else. The fundamental thing is not to do harm to anyone, the fundamental thing is to burn our own wax, and not our neighbors’. The fundamental thing is to have Light. It’s a matter of choosing: suppose we had a candle. Would you rather have that candle or some light? If you prefer to have the candle you’re going to be in the dark all your life, if you want to have Light you’re going to have to burn that candle, taking a match, striking it, and applying it, and letting the Light burn, that Light that is always vertical like a shining sword.

No matter what, material things fall, break, and disappear. The ancients used to say: Omnia Transit; all things must pass, all things are transitory..., all things go to the sea; like the flow of the rivers, all things have a Destiny. Let’s join in with Destiny! Let’s look at how the waters descend from the mountains; which are the purest waters? The ones that hit the rocks the most, the ones that fall in cascades and burst into great bubbles of white foam; the others, the cowardly waters, the ones that stay still, on the other hand, end up becoming rotten and no living being can live in them.

Make of your world one of Great Ideas, may good thoughts and sentiments inhabit you, singing, as if they were birds on the branch of a tree, as if they were colorful fish in the depth of the sea. May great Beings inhabit you, colorful and free.

Don’t let yourself fall to your knees, pick yourself up again and again. Put up your hands, like wings, like claws, against the flanks of History and project yourselves forward, forever forward. We must all die and perhaps we will all come to be reborn. We are all subject to the Great Wheel, to the great Samsara. But besides this, we are also subject to our own Will.

Some years ago, near the Passage of the Thermopylae, I encountered an old inscription that said: “Citizen, if you happen to come to our city, let it be known that three hundred Spartans died to accomplish its Laws”. They were able to pass through History with their example. Leonidas did not count the Persians that were before him, he simply considered that he had to defend a passage, because beyond it there was the treasure of the Athenians, a mystical and cultural treasure. He only managed to gain three extra days, but in those three days many things were saved. Where are those men today if not within us? Where are those magnificent people who asked Leonidas: “ Sir, today we are entering combat, should we not eat plentifully enough in order to be strong when facing the enemy?” Leonidas answered: “No, let’s eat light, because tonight we have a great banquet with Pluto,[2] the God of the dead.” Those soldiers didn’t tremble, but rather they looked at him and said: “And you, Leonidas, will you be at that banquet?”, to which he answered: “I will be the first”. “Then we will all eat tonight with you and with Pluto.” Where are those magnificent men of bygone days? Where are they, if not within us? They have not been forgotten, they have not been lost; we have simply buried them with garbage, with fear, with uncertainty.

Let’s leave all that aside and return to again see the feathered helmets, let’s return again to seeing the light of the sky through the broken walls, and let’s return to feeling our steps march, walking in time to the rhythm of our heart that beats in our breast. Victory! Victory! Victory!

[1] Nueva Acropolis, No. 96, October, 1990, Spain.
[2] Hades, in Greek mythology. Prof. Livraga uses the Roman name, it being more familiar to the general public.

Jorge Angel Livraga

http://www.acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=esp&ID=157

The art of encountering God

2008-01-17T18:55:00.001-08:00

Humanity would never have managed to master the natural environment if it weren’t for the seemingly supernatural notion of the intuition of God. This is the one thing that definitely differentiates us from the animal world.

According to the oldest traditions, which do not contradict the latest scientific research, the species usually called “Homo Sapiens” does not represent the beginning of Humanity, but rather the remains of a previous form of culture and civilization that was destroyed, generating a new one, the present one.

What characterizes this “Homo Sapiens”, and what differentiates him from the degenerate humanoid called “Homo Habilis”, is that from the beginning, his entire life, reflected in the remains of his works, is impregnated with magic, that is, of a metaphysical instrumentation at the service of the more or less mysterious contact between his own spiritual identity and the Divine.

The cults of the Great Mother or the Bear Father are nothing more than externalized forms of a living and permanent perception of a “Something” that is beyond that which is strictly visible, with an indeterminate number of intermediaries, from the Spirits of Nature to the great Gods that govern the destiny of the stars, including our own planet Earth.

Throughout hundreds of millennium, cycles and vicissitudes of all kinds, Man has tried to more or less intellectually understand this Instinctive Intuition of his forefathers. And as some specialized in the use of wood or stone, others looked to the metaphysical and a synthesis of higher knowledge, arriving at a 'Magna Sciencia' that later came to be known as Magic.

But the integration of this spiritual knowledge was adapted within the context of each town through the sacerdotal casts. They quickly understood that their spiritual experiences could not be transmitted to the masses if they weren’t communicated through parables, anecdotal stories, moral rules, and a ceremonial that helped the least favored perceive the Divine, however sporadically. And so were born all the religions. The One who had received the Divine Spark in His Bosom and the possibility to express it in a simple and codified manner, became a founder of a religion.

Despite the terrible losses that humanity's ignorance and appetite for destruction have caused, we can still witness the more or less complete remnants of the last religions that the World has had. These remnants were adapted to the historical moment and geographical area in which they were transmitted, and therefore it is logical that a Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, in the 6th century before the Current Era, could not have given the same Message than that of a Jesus Christ, five or six hundred years later, in a different time and place.

In today’s world, there are millions of apparent atheists as well as millions of believers from each of the great religions such as Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism or Islamism. Along with these there are thousands of sects of these same beliefs and others of a confused origin. Why do we say “apparent atheists”?

Because although there are those who don’t believe in or perceive God in any way, and go so far as to proclaim that it is a completely artificial concept created in the darkness of the terror of death; the majority reject, not so much the possibility of a Cosmic Intelligence guided by a necessity or a Superior Will, but rather the infantile forms in which the religions in general present the great mysteries that man has been faced with since his origin.

The extraordinary technological advances and the paths of scientific knowledge that have been opened to human experience in the last two or three centuries, have made untenable the most popular beliefs of a Universe that was created less than 7,000 or 8,000 years ago, physical hells and heavens, the resurrection of the flesh or seas that open up to let chosen people pass and then close up on its enemies. Today, there are many people who live with a heart or a liver transplanted from a younger body, fly in machines that easily surpass the highest mountains and go around the world, and there are other man-made machines that have surpassed all the marvels that Sacred Books have been describing for thousands of years. And together with those indubitable successes, and many others that would be too tedious to mention, Mankind is discovering that the planet he walks upon is like another living being, and its inhabitants, be they vegetable, animal or human, have marvelously designed bodies, with performance, survival, and reproduction capacities that no machine can equal.

Nevertheless, the dominating materialism causes these marvels to become objects of curiosity, and in religion, we continue to demand from ancient texts, which are so often distorted, the answers to every question, and among them the very fundamental one of the art of encountering God. And when they aren’t found, the texts aren’t questioned and their symbols aren’t investigated, instead the existence of the Divine Being is denied, with the outcome of anguish, deprivation and badness that follows.

It is a mistake that is detrimental to human dignity and leads to a bestializing of mankind, sinking him deeper and deeper into the most stupid atheism or into the narrowest fanaticism.

We propose another path, the path of philosophy in the classical manner.

This path can, with relative ease, uplift us to the encounter of God, within us and in all of our surroundings.

If we overcome our materialist inertia, our share of anguish, ignorance and blindness, we will discover in a simple way, that all things, from the subatomic structures to the nests of galaxies, from the artistic and functional designs of the wings of an insect to the skeleton that supports our mortal flesh, have all been conceived and calculated with superhuman precision; that there is an evident functional ecology that interlinks all the elements in the universe, governed by cyclical and omniscient laws.

Let’s stop and observe.

Look at the marvelous harmony that is contained in the petals of a flower or the structure of crystals. These, by themselves, could never have “conceived themselves” in order to become so perfect and amazing. There must have been “Something” that conceived and designed them, and this Thought comes from a Will that generates it and justifies it.

With a healthy “Philosophical Pantheism”, people that are intelligent and free from prejudices can perceive the presence of a “Higher Something” which we can call God, who through innumerable intermediaries, creates these marvels. This “Something” has not forgotten anyone or anything. Everything is intelligently alive and efficient.

Let’s stop and observe.

It’s not a waste of time to actively contemplate the marvels found in the myriad eyes of a fly or in the aerodynamic structure of a swallow, quite the contrary.

The materialists say that all of this is the fruit of evolution, of random chance, etc. But evolution can be understood as an intelligent process that integrates experiences, and random chance can be seen as a series of causes and effects. This demonstrates that our Universe, and ourselves included, are in a “Macro bios”, a Super-Being that has put into motion a super-existence of a prodigious functionality. And we are immersed in it and it in us, in all our aspects and planes of consciousness.

EVERYTHING IS GOD.

And if that weren’t the case, if a single mote of dust was outside of God, then that mote of dust would limit God and that is an aberration. The essential attribute of God is, naturally, to be omnipresent in each and every thing and being, so that if God didn’t exist, neither would they. That mote of dust of our example, seen through a powerful microscope, would appear to us as a micro-universe as harmonious, alive and efficient as the Solar System.

If we rediscover that currently almost lost art of encountering God, we would free ourselves from many limitations, racisms and fanaticisms. We would free ourselves from anguish and would be naturally helpful, good and just.

God is not a harsh judge, nor a father, nor a mother, nor a tormenter... God is simply GOD... He who encounters It, knows.

Jorge Angel Livraga

(Translated from the Spanish article, 'El arte de encontrar a Dios')
http://www.acropolis.org/articles/articles-read.aspx?lang=esp&ID=60