Meeting The Masters

The story of creation and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as told in the first three chapters of the book of Genesis is one of the most interesting spiritual texts that has come down to us. For here, told in the simplest of terms, is the story of how we were created and why we are as we are now. The story has different elements to it and can be taken on different levels but the aspect I want to look at here concerns the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Here's the relevant passage. 

'And the Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it you shall die."'

The first thing to note is that this is all in Paradise and so this tree forms part of Paradise. Everything in Paradise has been created by God and everything there is good so the tree in itself is good. What is the tree and what its fruit? Clearly, the tree is the self-conscious mind and the fruit is that which awakens mind, thought. The tree is knowledge of good and evil or just knowledge. Adam and Eve did not have an awakened mind before eating the fruit. Thereafter, their eyes were opened which means their mind, their capacity for self-reflection and thought, awoke.

Does this mean the serpent was correct and Adam and Eve were right to listen to him? After all, they moved out of naive innocence into a world of experience in which they could grow. In the prelapsarian Garden of Eden nothing could change or so it might seem. This is a theory certain esoteric schools would subscribe to and they would see the serpent/Lucifer as the Light Bearer his name implies, being either a liberator of humanity in a Promethean sense, freeing us from a tyrannical Gnostic-type Archon god, or else simply working in line with the needs of evolutionary development by helping to awaken mind in infant humanity who were little more than animal men at that stage.

In my view this, to some, appealing scenario is not correct. We know that God is love and God is good. As in goodness is God - there is no goodness apart from God. God is also truth so what he says about not eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil is also truth. And yet it awoke mind in man so how do we reconcile these two facts? The fruit is knowledge and knowledge is good but there are two sorts of knowledge. The knowledge that comes from God and the knowledge that comes from self. Eating the fruit from the tree after having been told not to do this gave knowledge apart from God. It was the act of a being that wished to become God, or a god, it makes no difference, without reference to the true God. One can speculate that the fruit was not in itself evil but eating it before being ready to do so made it the source of sin and death.

Knowledge is good. As potential co-creators with God we are called to knowledge but that knowledge should be centred in an awareness of the full reality of God. Knowledge without that awareness becomes evil or there is the strong likelihood it will become so. The serpent tempted Eve to disobey God therefore to deny God and assert the separate self. This was the cause of evil and why Lucifer is no heroic freedom fighter but a rebel against goodness and truth, something that continues to this day.

 At one time it was thought that the world was created in 4004 BC. This was following a literal reading of the early books of the Old Testament by a 17th century Irish archbishop called James Ussher though he was not alone in giving such a recent date. Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton apparently also thought in similar terms. This seems absurd to us nowadays as scientific investigation has shown the world to be much earlier in its origin but I have to say that in my mind 6,000 years is nothing and I can't imagine how anyone ever thought like that. They didn't in India where the age of the Earth has long been envisaged in millions of years with Days and Nights of Brahma (periods of cosmic manifestation and dissolution) alternating ceaselessly. This is a much more realistic scenario.

Modern science estimates the world to be about 4.5 billion years old with life in the form of microscopic organisms first appearing about 3.7 billion years ago. Early types of humans entered the scene around 2 million years ago with homo sapiens originating about 300,000 years ago. This is the current official timeline but is always subject to change as new discoveries are made and old ones reassessed. The first civilisations are thought to have emerged a mere 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia following the development of agriculture.

I believe that last date will one day seem as ridiculous as we now think of Archbishop Ussher's date for the creation of the world. Granted, a slow development may reach a tipping point at which it suddenly accelerates, but still the length of one timeframe, that for the development of man, compared to the rapidity of the other, development of culture, should at the very least raise questions. Is modern civilisation really the first there has been on the Earth, given the vast periods involved? Or are there other possibilities concerning the life of human beings on this planet?

The author Graham Hancock has a recent series on Netflix in which he explores the idea that a great civilisation was destroyed at the end of the last Ice Age when fragments of a comet from the Taurid meteor shower hit the Earth causing massive floods that swept away all traces of that culture. It is thought to have been a seafaring, therefore coastal, civilisation, and as sea levels are supposed to have risen nearly 200 feet since the time of the presumed impact 12,800 years ago, this fact would explain the absence of any remains that could bear witness to its presence. Nevertheless, myths and tradition from all over the world speak of a global devastation by flood and the destruction of an advanced civilisation. Plato's story of Atlantis is known by everyone and, curiously enough, the date he gives coincides with the date of the presumed comet strike and the rising of sea levels. Hancock is actually only one of many people who have speculated on this subject but he has done his research and presents a good case for the open-minded which, unfortunately, is not the scientific community.

Occult tradition knows all about ancient civilisations and it speaks of not just one but several. Because these originate at different times in the Earth's evolution when consciousness is not the same as it is today, and even the material environment is different, they are not all the same type as ours. Atlantis, or the civilisation that we call Atlantis today, had technology but it was a very different sort to ours, some of it being indistinguishable to what we would think of as magic. In some ways their capabilities would be greater than ours, in others less. What seems to be the pattern though with all these civilisations is that they rise and fall, progressing to an advanced level of sophistication and then succumbing to hubris though it may be that even their genetic quality deteriorates too as ours is said to be doing since the Industrial Revolution which was a two-edged sword in that it allowed for the survival of individuals with maladaptive mutations who then go on to have children themselves. This is an emotional subject but if one looks at it logically and without judgement the facts and the consequences of those facts are clear. Abundance, a comfortable, safe and secure life, will allow for the survival and prospering of individuals who would have previously died because they were not sufficiently fit for the environment. The basic human stock will slowly deteriorate. No one can do anything about this unless one resorts to unacceptable, rightly unacceptable, actions but it helps explain why advanced societies tend to self-destruct. In a way their achievements work against them. But there is also the fact that as human beings carve out a comfortable world for themselves with wealth and power and a surfeit of pleasure to be had they lose connections to the gods, the spiritual realm, and this leads to their downfall. All the traditions speak of the flood having come about because of human arrogance and wickedness. The inevitable comparisons with the world today and the state of our civilisation, materially and technologically advanced but spiritually impoverished, must be made. Indeed, it may be that we are rediscovering this idea of destroyed ancient civilisations now as a warning.

Hancock draws attention to the stories of many societies from all around the world relating how their cultures were started off by mysterious visitors, usually from beyond the seas, who gave primitive peoples the foundation stones of civilisation, agriculture, arts and crafts, architectural skills, astronomy and so on.  These were often regarded as gods but it may be that they were survivors from the destroyed civilisations trying to sow seeds for a rebirth. At that time it is probable that primitive hunter gatherers coexisted with the advanced civilisation for there is no reason other than ideological prejudice to assume that all human groups progressed at an equal pace or were equally developed. The civilised society may have been more vulnerable to environmental catastrophe as, apart from existing in areas now submerged, they would have been less familiar with a hand to mouth existence than the hunter gatherers who could have adapted much more readily to the new circumstances.

Given the long time homo sapiens has been around, even by current estimation (it may, of course, be even longer than presently recognised), it seems very reasonable to think there have been previous civilisations that have vanished, witness to their presence being obscured by earth changes. And, in fact, that is just what myth and legend tell us. The present cycle is just that, a cycle in the ongoing evolution of the Earth, and each cycle starts afresh though with some input from the past as the survivors of the putative Atlantis are said to have kickstarted civilisations in Egypt, South and Central America and even (I would maintain) Great Britain. We have forgotten so much about our past and who we are. We have forgotten our earthly history and we have also forgotten our spiritual history. The fact that many different sources are currently trying to remind us of both of these indicates to me that there is a concerted effort to get us to wake up. Obscuring the past may once have had a purpose as it enabled us to get on with building a new present but that time is over and it is now time for humanity to rediscover its earthly and spiritual heritage. This is all the more urgent as there are several signs that what happened before with Atlantis may happen again to us. We are a civilisation that has forgotten the gods and lost its sense of reality. It is widely accepted (though publicly ignored) that we are facing economic and cultural collapse but it may be that other factors may also play their part in determining the future as they did at the end of the last Ice Age. 

 There's a fair amount of Libra in my birth chart - Mercury and Venus are both there as is Neptune. Maybe that's why I usually try to look at both sides of a question. With that in mind this post is going to be about the importance of esoteric understanding if one wants to make real spiritual progress. It is neither sufficient nor necessary for salvation but it is very helpful and, though the intellectual mind is not the key to unlocking the door of spiritual truth, it can certainly guide the key to the lock.

Faith and knowledge are often separated and regarded as almost in opposition but I see them as twins with each one both complementing and deepening the other. Without faith knowledge is dry and spiritually sterile. Without knowledge faith can be impotent and immature and rooted in ignorance. Ignorance is never good. It will likely lead to error and then becomes faith in what is false. What use is that?

Esoteric teachings are simply a guide to the higher aspects of the human being, where we have come from, where we should be going and how we get there from here. Then they describe the spiritual structure of the universe. They are, properly considered, the knowledge aspect of religion and so are a form of spiritual science. Like material science they can be abused but in themselves they are good because they are founded on truth though I would add the strict proviso that any teaching calling itself esoteric needs to be subjected to the rigour of intuition, common sense and cast in the light of the reality of Christ. If it conflicts with the latter, it can be rejected.

There may have been a time when knowledge of the higher worlds was relatively unimportant for the work we need to do in this world to grow and develop spiritually but now human beings have evolved their minds and the mind needs to be catered for. It must have food. If it does not have real knowledge it will have false knowledge and it will act according to that in ways that would not have been possible before as it has more agency. Therefore, you could say that esoteric understanding has become more important. A developing mind has to have something to know. 

Moreover, there is a God-given impulse in the mind pushing it towards growth. We need to understand. We are in fact obliged to understand and esoteric teachings provide some form of understanding. They are not perfect because we are still very limited beings but we are growing towards the light and esoteric teachings can be a kind of fertiliser that help us to grow. As long, that is, as they are balanced by growth in the spiritual and moral sense. I refer back to the previous post.

 Did you know that English is the only language in which the 1st person singular pronoun is capitalised? I only learned this recently and haven't confirmed it but, according to my limited knowledge of other languages (je, ich, yo, io, ego), it appears to be true. It undoubtedly has some significance, reinforced by the fact that the letter 'I' is like the numeral 1.

The significance, as I see it, is that the English-speaking peoples were those who were most conscious of themselves as individuals and, by extension, most concerned with personal liberty. These are actually highly spiritual matters because individuality is what makes a created being start to become a god in its own right and the sense of personal liberty is what gives a material being release from the control of matter into the freedom of spirit. This is why the Creator created, to make, to put it somewhat naively, friends and companions as opposed to mindless slaves.

Now, the process can go wrong. If individuality becomes important for its own sake and seeks to serve itself rather than God it has, so to speak, gone bad. But if it aligns itself with the creative purpose of the universe and seeks harmonious interaction with other individuals, it is carrying out God's will and furthering its own spiritual fulfilment.

By this line of thinking it would be no accident that English became a kind of universal language in the 19th and 20th centuries and continues to be so. The gift of individuality, hitherto present but relatively undeveloped, spread throughout all the nations of the world. This was a major step forward in human evolution. Now what is needed is for this individual sense of self to connect with the greater Self of the universe. Having become conscious of itself it needs to learn to go beyond itself but it could not do this without first knowing itself. It is the sense of separation that allows for fully conscious union.

I is the basic reality if the universe. It is how God would describe himself. I, the 1 without a second. It is what consciousness reduces to. The eternal subject. God's great gift to his creation was to bestow his supreme sense of self on us human beings so that we could become like him. This is what being made in his image means and it is an idea expressed in English more fully than in any other language. This was the task of the English speaking peoples, to give the world a full sense of what it is to be an individual.

In many traditional spiritualities time was regarded as flowing in cycles with a primeval Golden Age when man walks with the gods descending to a spiritually darkened time in which matter becomes more dense and impenetrable and consciousness collapses in on itself. Then the process concludes in cosmic destruction and a new era commences with another Golden Age.

Christianity rejected that idea, presenting a new understanding in which time progresses in a linear fashion from creation in the Garden of Eden leading eventually through a historical process to the city of the New Jerusalem in which creation is transformed and drawn up into divine reality.

Many people in the spiritual world nowadays reject the Christian view and prefer the cyclical one, seeing it as making more metaphysical sense. Strangely enough, one approach that roughly mirrors the Christian idea is the modern materialistic understanding of human life which would maintain we are progressing to a better human form in which science and technology correct all the faults of our physical bodies and give us, if not immortality, at least a more perfect vehicle to house our consciousness which will also be tweaked and improved though technological means whether that be drugs or even by blending us with machines. This is transhumanism, a great spiritual evil because it denies the spirit replacing it entirely with matter, but one to which the modern world seems inevitably to be tending.

Which of these two ideas about time is the more accurate? My answer is that both are true. Time is indeed cyclical but it also moves forward and if there is a spiritual descent the purpose of that is to bring about conditions in which consciousness can become more individualised with a greater sense of personal freedom in the constricted material conditions. Then there can be a reascent but with the fruits of greater self-awareness.

Most people interested in traditionalist metaphysics believe that all religions convey the same essential truths. There is a perennial philosophy which is the root of them all and they differ only in externals and certain relatively unimportant doctrines. I think this is a mistake. There is something qualitatively different about Christianity and what Christ brought to human consciousness. It has to do with freedom, it has to do with love and it has to do with time. In traditional metaphysics time is something to be transcended. One goes beyond all aspects of the material to enter into complete spiritual consciousness. But Christ redeemed creation which means the qualities of the relative world are not completely transcended and effectively lost but they are spiritualised and thereby add something to divine reality, something that was not there before.

Time is certainly a great mystery in that there is a state beyond earthly time which is the state of divine being. But it is not simply an illusion from the spiritual point of view. It is not just swallowed up in eternity. Through time creation is brought to fulfilment but then at the end of worldly time something happens that is similar to what happened to Christ's body at the Ascension. Time will be taken up into eternity but it will thereby enrich eternity, its quality sweetening eternity as sugar when dissolved sweetens tea.

My new book Earth is a School comes out at the end of the month. Faced with a statement like that in the title the obvious thing to ask is what is the school for? And the short answer is that it is a school for making gods.

When you look around at your friends and neighbours that might seem ridiculous. Indeed, when you look at yourself it might seem positively absurd. Nonetheless, it is true. No doubt most of us are not anywhere near the end of the process but the fact remains that this material environment is the ideal scenario for making self-centred beings into higher forms of life, able to engage with the universe with love and creative energy on its many planes of being. That's what a god is though we give the word a small 'g' to make clear that these gods operate within the parameters of divine creation as laid down by God the Creator. To seek to operate outside these parameters is what makes a devil, basically a being that rejects its Maker and the deepest pattern of its own soul.

We started a long time ago as little different from the animals, fully embedded in nature with no intellectual capacity to speak of and no real sense of an individual self. The forces of evolution worked on us over vast periods of time. The challenges and experiences of the earthly situation moulded us and drove us in a certain direction. Different groups of human beings experienced different challenges but the general direction was similar; to bring out intelligence, creativity and the sense of self. Early man had none of this. He reacted instinctively with unselfconscious awareness, and he was largely one with his environment. But the story of civilisation is the story of becoming more conscious. That is to say, of consciousness contracting and becoming centred on itself so in one way shrinking but in another becoming clearer and sharper. Losing the early spiritual contact with life, using the word spiritual in the loosest of senses, and becoming more focussed on the physical world. Of course, an animal is completely focussed in its physical being and early humans were the same but they retained a connection to the world soul which is a unified field of consciousness encircling the planet and can be regarded as the inner side of Nature. It is, as it were, the outer garment of Spirit, where the forces of Spirit begin to touch matter. It is not Spirit itself.

When the mind is more directed towards the physical world it starts to separate itself from other minds. This leads to the development of individual intelligence. You become a real self and you need a real mind in order to function as a self. We are well into that stage but that is esoterically regarded as the nadir of an arc that stretches from above (the heavens) to below (the earth) and from the esoteric point of view, esoteric here meaning unacknowledged by everyday thought, the process has stalled. Instead of moving on from this stage, back up towards spirit, we are digging ourselves deeper into it. We are solidifying ourselves in matter. 

This material entrenchment has been encouraged by anti-spiritual forces, the recognition of which is probably the most important thing we could do right now to get back on track. For if we fail to see these forces, that they exist and what they seek to do which is trap our consciousness eternally in matter, we face spiritual disaster. This is something that has to be done on an individual level as everything must be at this stage in the evolutionary journey. The school applies to each and every soul and though not all have the same lessons at the same time, all need to recognise the reality of spirit to avoid flunking the course.

Five years ago, I wrote a post which has a bearing on this subject  and I would like to quote from it here.