(Lecture delivered July 13, 1930)
CONTENTS: Light for the materialism-ridden Occident. — Why be satisfied with spiritual and mental husks? — No oracle is needed to answer your questions. — Occidentals have lost the key to self-knowledge. — Evolve by self-directed evolution. — The Psychical Powers: they die with the body. They are not the source of spiritual powers. How they are used by the great ones. Their danger when used by the ignorant. — The average man of the Occident intellectually lazy. — Beware of him who says: "Lo, here is the Christ!" — Wisdom the treasury of experience. — It is the blows of destiny that awaken. — Membership in The Theosophical Society. — The Inner Body of the T.S. — What is empty space? — Was the Pyramid of Cheops merely a tomb? — The higher initiation of the Mystery schools.
I am looking for gods among you. I mean it! I am looking to see how many of you manifest — however feebly — the divinity within you, for this divinity you cannot hide. It will shine forth from you as an emanation that any thoughtful and percipient mind can sense. It will stream forth from your eyes, shine from your face, and your very manner of holding yourself will show to a looker-on who knows how to read the signs just how far you have climbed the evolutionary ladder of life.
I am looking for gods among you. Do I find them? Yes! Yes! I see in you the fire of intelligence; I see the flame of understanding; I see the rein of self-control, however inadequately and imperfectly it may be held, governing the lower man in you; and in so much I sense that I stand here before an audience of gods, and am speaking to an audience of gods. Do you know how I can interpret this? Because I myself am an imbodied god. Having understanding within me, I can interpret it when I see it in you. Having intelligence in me, I recognize it in you. Feeling the urge of brotherly love in my heart, I see how my words evoke it forth from your own heart. I see it in your faces; for the very core of the core of each one of you is a divinity.
I tell you this on every Sunday when I talk to you, because it is so important, especially in the materialism-ridden Occident of the last hundred years or so, during which time men lost their grip on all things that are worthwhile, on all things that stand forever — the great realities of existence. I want to recall to your minds what you really are, so that you yourselves may choose your own path, marching steadily ever upwards towards that divinity which is not only within you, within the core of the core of you, but which also shines over you and deluges you with its divine radiance and which permeates you with its celestial fire.
Why not ally yourselves more fully with this inner divinity within you? Why be satisfied with spiritual and mental husks that the swine do eat, to use the language of the Christian New Testament, impolite as that language is? Why choose bran, the husks, the rejecta, when you can have the full kernel furnishing the divine bread of wisdom? You can have it. You can indeed have it. You have it, but you won't take it, because you have forgotten that you have it within you. You know that what I tell you is true.
Two Sundays ago I asked you, when standing here before you — before an audience like you at any rate — I asked you: Who are you? and I wonder how many of you offhand could have given me a quick, a ready, an accurate answer. And on last Sunday I asked you: Have you found yourself? If you have, nothing that I could say to you will be strange to you. The teachings of the ancient wisdom would then simply come to you as familiar thoughts, as dear and precious meditations springing from the deeps of your own heart. And today I ask you again if you know who you are, and if you have found yourself, what are you? and whither are you going? Can any one of you answer these questions? It is true that you are filled with intuitions, and therefore also intuitively do you know that what I tell you is true. But if I were to ask you for an intellectual exposition in answering these questions that I put before you, what could you answer me?
Is it any wonder that the god Apollo, at his Oracle in Delphi, Greece, in ancient times had written over the portico of the Temple raised in his honor, two words: Gnothi seauton, "Know Thyself!"? And you need not come to an oracle in order to have your questions answered. You have it all within. You can answer all your own questions, every one of you, once that you come into a self-conscious realization of who you are, and what you are when you have found yourself. You will then know what your place in the universe is, what your origin was, and what your future will be. I can tell you, further, if you have the answers to these questions, which you can have if you know yourself, then this world would be a heaven, because disputes would stop, quarrels would cease, understanding and brotherly love would take the places of strife and discord.
These are the truths that The Theosophical Society, above everything else, was founded to bring back to the cognition of the men of the West. To the men of the East also does this apply, but particularly so to Occidentals, because the Occidentals have lost the key to self-knowledge. You have verily lost that key. The words that our announcer read to you this afternoon are no vain words. They are not mere poetry, they were not uttered merely in an attempt to produce an impression. I repeat the words of all the great seers and sages of the ages: Knock, and if you give the right knock, it will be opened unto you. Ask, and if you ask aright, in self-forgetfulness and in sheer hunger for light, for truth, ye shall receive.
There is truth in the universe, truth which has been tested throughout innumerable ages by the greatest men, by the great sages and seers of all time, by the greatest men, I say, that the human race has ever given birth to — the greatest thinkers, the greatest psychologists, the greatest philosophers, the founders of the greatest world religions. I have uttered a few of their names time and time and time again: Jesus the Syrian sage, and the great Gautama the Buddha, are two whom it will suffice to mention now.
The roots of their teachings are the same in each and all of the great religions and philosophical systems for they tell you what you are, whence you came, whither you go, and what the universe is of which you are, each one of you, an inseparable part, therefore containing within you all that the universe contains. One drop of the water of the sea will tell you the mysteries of the ocean. You are such drops of the infinite ocean of life; and if you know yourself, ye shall know all the secrets of that infinite ocean of life.
You have everything within you — spiritual powers, intellectual powers, psychical powers so called, astral powers, vital powers, and even physical powers; and you don't use one thousandth part of what you have within you, because you don't know that you have these powers. You prefer, you have preferred, your fathers have preferred, to take either the dead-letter teachings of a moribund church or the equally dogmatic and unsatisfactory teachings of an unknowing science — a science whose weakness (and equivalently whose strength) is that it changes from year to year because it learns more.
But do you think I am going to base the beliefs of all my being on a changing theory which passes from phase to phase? No! I am going to follow that still small pathway within me, which will lead me, if faithfully followed, to the heart of the universe — my parent, my divine source, and yours. That is where I shall find wisdom and peace and vision, because I shall drink of the waters of life eternal. These waters are within me, within you.
Men have learned something of the powers of the physical universe, something of the feeble because undeveloped powers of their own inner constitution; and these powers have blinded them, imperfectly developed as they are, and oh! so imperfectly understood — have blinded them I say, to the sublimer powers of the spirit still more within.
When a theosophical lecturer speaks after this fashion, he does not mean that ye should abandon what we have that is worthy, that is of value, that is useful. He means only that ye should seek for something higher and nobler; that ye should grow; that ye should evolve by self-directed evolution, as Katherine Tingley so often told you from this platform — by self-directed evolution, meaning by rapid growth instead of merely flowing along on this steadily advancing but oh! so slow river of time.
Use your will; use your intelligence; use your intellect; use the faculties for self-development that you have; and thus be, because ye shall become, and thus be ever more fully the god within you. Every one of you, in the core of his being, is a Christ, is a Buddha, is a great sage and seer, is a spiritual clairvoyant, is a mystic, is a sublime poet, is a lofty-minded scientist, is a genius, is a supremely great artist. Think!
The human race has produced all these manifestations of the human spirit. Shall we say that certain ones of the sons of men have been particularly favored, and that the other children of men have not the same chance? How can that be? These great ones came from the same human stock that we are; the same blood flowed in their veins as flows in ours; all the faculties that they had and developed, are human. You also have them all.
Show me out of these great men, first, a single one that ever harmed his fellow; second, who ever limited the use of the faculties that he had to the so-called psychical powers. I know not one. All of them were teachers of men. All of them were guided by the divine flame within, by the spiritual light which is bounded by neither space nor time, and which appealed as strongly to the human heart in the ages of the past as it will appeal in a billion years from now, if men then still exist on earth.
But the psychical powers so called, such as thought-transference and clairaudience and clairvoyance — useful if guided by high moral power — die when the body dies; pass when the body is dissolved, and that is the end of them. But what remain not only in the individual who has lived and taught, but also in the hearts of his fellows, are the things of great and outstanding value: the teaching of men to love each other; the teaching to men that they are sons of the gods, children of the spiritual universe, having everything within them that the universe has — every energy, every faculty, every power — that they can become divine if they will. The teaching of love, of almighty love, which is all-permeant, which penetrates everywhere, and which the stoniest of human hearts never has been able to resist; the teaching of compassion, of pity, of mercy, of kindliness, of universal brotherhood — one of the sublimest of our theosophical doctrines, that fundamentally we are all one, keepers of each other, wholly responsible for what we do to each other, responsible for the sufferings that we cause, for the aching hearts that we shall be called to account by nature's spiritual law in making ache — all these qualities and powers flow forth from the spirit, because they all originate in spiritual faculties; and when you have come to use and enjoy these spiritual faculties self-consciously, then you live in the eternal life, because your consciousness becomes cosmic in its sweep. It is no longer limited to the fleshly body, or to the mere interests of one incarnation on earth. Think it over.
These manifestations of spiritual power are the marks of a spiritual genius; but I can tell you also that these great ones of the ages didn't neglect the psychical powers that were theirs. Nevertheless remember that the spiritual powers do not spring from the psychical powers. The psychical powers come into birth within men naturally, and in these great ones were used properly and usefully, because such psychic powers were guided by high moral instinct, and because in addition to being guided they were enlightened by the divine flame of spiritual intelligence.
People usually do not know these things in the West. They can know them, but as a rule they won't know them. You can find these teachings and doctrines in the ancient religious and philosophical literatures of the world; but if you ask a man to make this search, as a rule he says: "Hm, too high-brow!" He evidently wants to be a low-brow. Do you want to be low-brows? The beast is a low-brow. The truth of the matter is that the men of the Occident as a rule — not all of course, because there are splendid men everywhere, but the average man in the Occident — is intellectually lazy, and wants someone else to think for him. He wants to be led; he wants to be guided. And the proof of this statement is here: that upon the first discovery of the truth of his spiritual independence and of his inner spiritual power, the discovery runs away with him, and thereafter for a while he won't be guided by anybody, not even by his higher self.
"I am supreme," is his thought. "I am the supreme individual" — thus running to the other extreme — "nothing that I do not think of and cannot think of can possibly exist in the Universe, because I have not thought of it." Previous to that time he took everything that he thought and felt from books that he had read, or from someone who had acquired a certain position in the intellectual world.
Now, theosophists have something to lay before you, to set before you. It is at once an inspirer towards a nobler life and a corrective of our faults. The ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, belonging to no age, because it belongs to every age, was evolved forth by no one individual because every spiritually great man has taught it — and when I say spiritually great man, I mean the greatest of the great, the loftiest intellects, the titanic spiritual giants of the human race. This ancient wisdom-religion was their teaching, is their teaching, and will be their teaching. No one has invented theosophy. Theosophy will tell you what your spiritual nature is, what these psychical powers, so called, are, how you are builded, whence you came, what your present nature and usefulness in the universe is, what your destiny will be.
No theosophist ever presents his sublime philosophy to you and says: You must believe this or you cannot join us. We say: These are the teachings of the wisdom-religion of mankind; they are what I have told you they are. Undertake the study of these doctrines yourself. Prove them yourself. Follow them, if you are man enough to follow them, if you find them good. If you don't like them, don't take them.
We have no dogmas at all in The Theosophical Society. We are searchers for truth, learners of truth; and I tell you: be suspicious if anyone should ever stand before you and say: "Behold, I am the Christ." The great ones are always modest. The more that a man knows, the more indeed he may speak with decision and power, and he has the right to do so, but the less does he lay down what he knows as a law for others to follow. You know what is said in the Christian New Testament about those who were spoken of as coming in after times: Lo, someone will say, here is the Christ. Believe him not. And others will say: Lo, there is the Christ. Also believe him not.
But every man who knows something, who has truth even in minor degree, is entitled to say and has a right to say: I am the way, I am the life, because I can show you the way and give you the light. What does any university professor say? He says the same thing, but in your Occidental phrases. "Yes, sir, I am a teacher of psychology; I am a teacher of Greek; I am a teacher of astronomy; I stand before you teaching this subject or that." All this is simply saying: "I am the way to learn psychology; I am the way to learn Greek; I will show you the way to learn astronomy. Come to me, and I will give you light on these subjects."
Human hearts are stony. People talk about "tender" human hearts. My friends, human hearts are the most adamantine, stony things that I have ever known. Nothing will break this stoniness except that which lacks all violence, all force, which is modest, utterly kind, peaceful, brotherly. Do you know what it is? It is almighty love, the very cement of the universe, permeating everything, holding even the atoms together. None can resist it. Do you catch the thought?
What powers shall ye cultivate in order to grow, to be, to succeed? Those which nothing can withstand, which nothing and none can resist, which work day and night, in the silence and in the storm, always zealously, the very heart-energy of the universe, of which you are children — these are the powers which ye should cultivate: love, intelligence, compassion, pity, forgiveness, and such fruits of these as are gentleness, kindheartedness, mildness of spirit, and similar things. These are spiritual powers.
Next let me tell you a few of the fruits, of the rewards, that ye shall have, first from knowing that ye have these, then from cultivating them. Ye shall have spiritual clairvoyance, vision of universal sweep, limited only so far as you as an individual can interpret, can receive, can contain. The spiritual faculties are within you and can be cultivated to an infinite extent. Understanding, for instance, for understanding is also of the very nature of the heart of the universe. You have it within you. Ye can understand all things if ye cultivate it. Ye can understand why the grass grows, why the bloom is on the peach, why your fellow human beings live, why you are here, what the stars in their courses are constantly singing to you, why hate and love, night and day, summer and winter, heat and cold, and all the other pairs of opposites, exist in the universe.
Ye shall have clairaudience and clairvoyance of a spiritual kind — not the psychic counterparts of these, but the spiritual powers derived from the spiritual faculties within you. I tell you in all seriousness, that when ye possess these powers which ye can, by cultivating the inner divine faculties, the spiritual faculties, within you, ye shall hear the music of the spheres and know what it is that ye hear; ye shall hear and see the grass grow and understand why it grows; ye shall hear the atoms sing and see their movements, and the melodies that any physical body produces — the unison of the songs of all individual atoms. Psychic powers, so called, will give you none of these things; but the spirit within you will do so — son of the sun in very truth, your own inner god. It is your interpreter!
And material success? Shall I drop to the physical plane for a moment and tell you how to succeed in the material world? Perhaps for a moment only, because it will enable me to illustrate a point. The man who possesses spiritual faculties and powers and knows how to use them for good, never for evil — because he will then be destroyed, if he does, by the reaction, by the snap-back — the man who so uses them will have all that the physical world, the world of men, possesses for him — fortune, power, influence, human affection, human love; in fact all good things will be his.
And just here is the test: Do I take these unto me only, for me only, or wholly for the service of my fellow men? If the latter is the case, he is like a god who walks among men. If the former is the motive, he will never fully receive. Did you ever hear of a man who could get a corner on love? Is it possible for a human being to get a corner on understanding and intellect? Do you now get the idea?
Awake, I tell you! Be the best that you are. For, verily, ye are gods and the sons of gods — immortal divinities in your innermost essence! Ye don't know what ye have within you. And these psychic powers, the pursuit of which is now popular all over the Occident, leading people astray — are the psychic powers in themselves evil? No. But first, men don't know what they are; and, in the second place, when they do have a little of this, or of that, or of some other psychic power, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it is misused for selfish and ignoble purposes.
Therefore, the psychic powers themselves are not wrong, but they should be guided by the moral instinct and by the sublime vision springing from the god within you. Then their use is proper; and no matter what use be made of them, it is a safe and holy use.
What are these psychical powers so called? Here is a question on this topic that was sent in to me for answer:
Does the possession of psychic powers indicate a superior state of evolution? My observation has been that people possessing such so-called psychic powers generally feel that they have something to be proud of.
It would be something to be proud of in a certain way if only people knew how to use them and control them, instead of being used by them and controlled by them. Do you admire a man who cannot control himself, cannot control his faculties, but is a mere slave, a tool, an instrument, jumping-jacking around as it were, and not even able to control the spasmodic movements of his physical body? Is it an admirable sight? No. Lack of self-control is always an ugly thing to see, because it is an imperfect thing. But a man who controls himself, because he knows who he is, who retains command of his own faculties and powers, who is not afraid to let the heart of him out and to let the soul of him speak is a true man, and such a man ye need never have fear of.
It is the most difficult thing to do to keep yourself in perfect self-control. Self-control is always kindly; it is always beautiful; it is always respected. Think of the opposite picture. Did you ever know what is popularly called a psychic? I have met, I believe, but one in my life who had relatively perfect self-control. Now what is the reason that this is usually the case? The human race has attained, at the present stage of its evolution, a period in its evolutionary journey, friends, when psychical powers are beginning naturally to manifest themselves, and their further growth and further evolution should proceed along perfectly normal, proper, and legitimate lines. They should not be abused, any more than the faculties and powers of the physical body should be abused. And when anything is abused, is it good? Does it mean self-control? Is it beautiful? Is it lovely? Is it of good report? The silence contains the answer.
But if these people in whom the psychical powers are beginning to show themselves, very feebly as yet, had undertaken an equivalent training in morals — for morals indeed are not conventions, but based upon the very fabric of the universe, therefore founded in universal law — and if this moral instinct and training were guided by the divine flame of the god within each one, then development of these psychical powers and faculties would proceed perfectly naturally, normally, and the result would be a spectacle both beautiful and useful, and also highly instructive.
There is danger in the situation in the world today as it stands with regard to this matter of psychical faculties and powers. Theosophists have not been understood on this question of psychic faculties and powers. Many so-called psychics seem to think that theosophists oppose a natural, normal growth of human faculty and power; and that is untrue, and I have no hesitation in calling it plain poppycock. Theosophists do oppose any abuse of things. We oppose misuse of things. We say, for instance, that any man who will deliberately harm some other by misusing, let us say, some branch of science that he has mastered, should be restrained, should be taught, should be educated.
Theosophists do not say that knowledge is wrong. On the contrary, we say exactly the opposite: that knowledge per se is noble, and we cannot have too much of it. But knowledge misused is devilish. There must be the moral sense, the moral instinct, guiding the knowledge, and that moral instinct is a child of the divine flame within you. It is your conscience. Your conscience is not infinitely perfect. It is not, therefore, utterly sure and infallible. Your conscience therefore is a growing, expanding, evolving, thing, growing more sensitive as the ages pass, more sensitive to truth.
Therefore I cannot tell you: trust to your conscience utterly. I can only say that it is the only light you have, and you should cultivate your conscience more. Exercise it. Give to it its own sweep of power, and above everything else, find the road of the spirit within you; seek for that supernal light which is within your soul and guiding it. Go inwards. I will show you the way. Any true theosophical teacher can show you the way. If you want a voiceless teacher, then study the great books of the ancients. Teachers are needed in the world, as I have often told you.
Who are you? Have you found yourself? If so, give me the answers. What are you? Whither are you going? Give me the answering passwords.
Yes, these psychics do indeed seem to think that they are a superior people. It is a natural thing to think, because these psychical faculties and powers are still greatly undeveloped in them; they are but the first faint flutterings, as it were, of what in future will be wings, but the strength moving those wings in their flight to the stars will be that of the god within you.
No; no theosophists will ever tell you that psychical powers per se are wrong and evil. On the contrary, we have taught that they exist, that they are misunderstood, that people with psychical powers are in danger not only for themselves, but often are a danger to their fellows. Just pause a moment. Had any modern psychic lived four hundred, three hundred, years ago, what would have become of the poor wretch? The stake, the torture chamber, imprisonment, would likely have been his fate. Oh! "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn," as Burns so truly said. Knowledge is freedom; knowledge is the pathway to wisdom; and wisdom is the treasury of experience gained in past infinitudes of evolutionary growth.
You have will; you have intelligence; you have a heart. Make it an understanding heart. You have the power of discrimination; you can have decision of purpose; you have unsuspected faculties and powers locked up within you, and it is precisely these faculties that theosophists hope to awaken in the human race as future centuries fall by into the ocean of the past.
Psychics can greatly help if they have the moral instinct guiding them, and provided also that this moral instinct or conscience in its turn is guided by the god overshadowing you and whose ray is within you. Then all things will move harmoniously and smoothly, progressively, towards a spiritual and intellectual culmination which in future ages shall be more sublime than ye wit of today. For the time is coming when this earth shall be the home, the homeland, the home-sphere, of human gods walking over its surface, because the inner god in each human individual shall have been evolved forth, shall have unrolled, unwrapped, expressed itself; and then indeed men shall walk the earth like gods, because they will think like gods, and feel like gods.
Psychics and psychical powers: I know what they are. I know what they all mean. I too am one of them. But thanks be to the immortal gods, there was a spark burning in my heart, a light, which as a boy I discovered, and followed. I came to know my conscience, to recognize the inner light, this spark within. And by tending it faithfully, by watching it night and day, it grew, no longer remaining a spark-light, but becoming a warm and tender flame, suffusing my whole being with its soft radiance; and I know, friends, I know that if I tend that divine flame within my soul to the end of my days, without fail and faithfully, if my karma, my destiny, be favorable, perhaps, and kind to me, in my next incarnation on earth I shall manifest still more fully than the feeble flame I have so far evolved, the divine sun within my heart. This is not poetry. I am telling you sublime facts. Think! Think!
How many of you really think? You don't want even to be told, many of you — you men in the West — what you really are. You prefer to go along in a rut, following always what you have done before and what your fathers have done and your grandfathers, and their great-grandfathers. Children — forgive me! — children in intellect, of undeveloped mind, of undeveloped heart, whose intuition burns indeed, but oh, so feebly! The men of the West won't learn until the hard knocks and blows of destiny awaken them. Then they will turn to better things. Then they will learn something; and oh! how blessed this thought is: that none is rejected of the sons of men, that all, no matter how imperfectly developed, have a chance, another chance, a chance anew, in this or in some future incarnation on earth.
Most human beings today are like the little girl in the story that a friend sent in to me. Let me read it to you. I will read it in the exact words which were sent to me.
I cannot resist telling you of a little incident which occurred in a neighbor's family. The little girl of eight had formed the undesirable habit of using swear-words. Naturally the mother was shocked, but her method of punishment was unfortunate, as events proved. Whenever the bad words came, the mother would vigorously wash out the child's mouth with soap. But in spite of this the bad words continued.
One day the aunt, happening to pass the bathroom, was surprised to see the child vigorously applying this process of soapwashing to herself. "Poor child," thought the aunt, "she is trying." So, with her gentlest and most forgiving manner she said to the child, "More bad words?"
"No!" was the prompt and astonishing reply, "I'm just getting used to it!!"
Now, isn't this little girl's action just like the action of most grownups? We grownups can learn a great deal from the little ones, if we have the clairvoyant eye, I mean the seeing eye, and the understanding heart. We can learn a great deal from the clever sayings of little children. I love to hear them talk; I have learned more, really, from hearing little children talk, than I have from — from other people!
Now, friends, the time is very near to our closing hour. But I want to answer very briefly two or three other questions that were sent in to me with the request that I answer them today.
Does one, in joining your Society, have to give up membership in some other Theosophical Society with which he may be affiliated?
He does not. No indeed. We are not so narrow-minded as that. Any human being who sincerely accepts the principle of universal brotherhood can be a member of The Theosophical Society. It does not matter to what other society he may belong, or to what other religion he may belong, or whether he belongs to any other religion at all. The Theosophical Society is not a body of saints — whether ancients or latter-day. We are just human beings, trying to do good in the world as best we can.
But perhaps in sheer honesty I ought here to enter a caveat: that we have an inner body for esoteric training, for a study of the deeper teachings of theosophy, and to this inner body, simply on account of the necessities of the case — that is to say the necessity of having people in it who have been more or less prepared by training and study — to this inner body only students of theosophy who are members of The Theosophical Society can come. It would be fatal in such an Inner School to have a student following two diverse or antagonistic trainings, if you understand what I mean. This rule is not one which is due to any selfishness at all, but it exists simply because experience has shown that we cannot do otherwise.
The next question contains a clipping from The San Diego Union of June 15th, being a part of Arthur Brisbane's column. I will read a few words from Mr. Brisbane's remarks, and then read the querent's questions, and then answer it briefly. Mr. Brisbane is talking of the Venus of Milo, the famous statue at present in the Louvre in Paris, and he says:
According to Einstein, the empty space around the statue would seem to be the important thing. A common place man says the statue, the creation of human genius, is forty-seven trillion times more important than the space around it.
And the querent asks:
Which is the more vital: the dull cold exquisite marble statue perfect in every detail but lacking the breath of life — or space vibrant with pulsating eternal energy?
I say that the latter is the more important because the latter is full of spirit — even as the statue itself is — but, I ask you, which is the nobler: the creation of human genius, no matter how noble that creation is, or the surrounding space filled with potentialities for growth of all kinds and vibrant with life and cosmic thought? Decidedly the latter, and Einstein is right. I would say that the empty space — so-called empty because you don't see the life, the lives with which it is full — is forty-seven trillions of times fuller of mystery and beauty and the power and the genius of the gods than the carven statue made by human hand.
My last question:
For what purpose was the great Pyramid of Cheops built? Was it merely a tomb?
If so, merely a tomb, why is it that no dead bodies have ever been found in it — no mummified remnants of human mortality? No, it was a majestic fane, a majestic temple, wherein those who had been duly prepared to receive a vast and sublime light, received it, under wise guidance; and yet indeed it was a tomb: it was a tomb, but not of a dead body. It was a tomb of human personality, where the lower, passionate, weak, vacillating, unsteady-minded, man became, for the time being at least, an imbodied god.
By the ancient magic of the Mystery schools of the archaic ages, at the times of the higher initiation the god came forth from within the spiritual nature and shone directly through the physical vehicle, so that the body of the neophyte, as it lay in trance, was resplendent with light. And on the third day, when the neophyte was "raised," remaining conscious of his sublimer experiences in the inner worlds for a short or a longer period, depending indeed upon his own spiritual power, he taught even his teachers what he had learned behind the veil. And while he was in this state, his very face shone with glory, the glory of Father Sun!