“
Kizzy wanted to be a woman who would dive off the prow of a sailboat into the sea, who would fall back in a tangle of sheets, laughing, and who could dance a tango, lazily stroke a leopard with her bare foot, freeze an enemy's blood with her eyes, make promises she couldn't possibly keep, and then shift the world to keep them. She wanted to write memoirs and autograph them at a tiny bookshop in Rome, with a line of admirers snaking down a pink-lit alley. She wanted to make love on a balcony, ruin someone, trade in esoteric knowledge, watch strangers as coolly as a cat. She wanted to be inscrutable, have a drink named after her, a love song written for her, and a handsome adventurer's small airplane, champagne-christened Kizzy, which would vanish one day in a windstorm in Arabia so that she would have to mount a rescue operation involving camels, and wear an indigo veil against the stinging sand, just like the nomads.
Kizzy wanted.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Lips Touch: Three Times)
“
There is, in truth, no difference between esoteric knowledge and all the rest of man's knowledge and proficiency. This esoteric knowledge is no more of a secret for the average human being than writing is a secret for those who have never learned it.
”
”
Rudolf Steiner (How to Know Higher Worlds)
“
The heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility. You can only acquire right knowledge when you have learnt to esteem it. Man has certainly the right to turn his eyes to the light, but he must first acquire this right.
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Rudolf Steiner (How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation (Classics in Anthroposophy))
“
The most fundamental exercise is self-observation, which is the catalyst for inner change, it will give self-knowledge and a clear mind and perception. Without it, the attempt to reach enlightenment and awaken consciousness is destined to fail.
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Belsebuub (The Awakening of Perception: A Collection of Talks and Articles)
“
Plato believed that insanity was essential to our nature and assumed that it held esoteric knowledge about who we are.
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Michael Greenberg (Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life)
“
A world without esoteric knowledge is a poorer place and we as a humanity pay the price for the loss of its principles.
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Belsebuub
“
Today, we have knowledge of many, many things and the relations among human beings have multiplied ad infinitum. But we live in cities that are like deafening factories in awful Babels, with nothing to remind us of our inner world. Our communion with this inner world is not through contemplation but through books. We have passed from intuition into intellectualism.
”
”
Rudolf Steiner (Esoteric Cosmology)
“
Why Do People become Shadowhunters, by Magnus Bane
This Codex thing is very silly. Downworlders talk about the Codex like it is some great secret full of esoteric knowledge, but really itès a Boy Scout manual.
One thing that it mysteriously doesnèt address is why people become Shadowhunters. And you should know that people become Shadowhunters for many stupid reasons.
So here is an addition to your copy.
Greetings, aspiring young Shadowhunter-to-be- or possibly already technically a Shadowhunter. I canèt remember whether you drink from the Cup first or get the book first. Regardless, you have just been recruited by the Monster Police. You may be wondering, why? Why of all the mundanes out there was I selected and invited to this exclusive club made up largely, at least from a historical perspective, of murderous psychopaths?
Possible Reasons Why
1. You possess a stout heart, strong will, and able body.
2. You possess a stout body, able will, and strong heart.
3. Local Shadowhunters are ironically punishing you by making you join them.
4. You were recruited by a local institute to join the Nephilim as an ironic punishment for your mistreatment of Downworlders.
5. Your home , village, or nation is under siege by demons.
6. You home, village, or nation is under siege by rogue Downworlders.
7. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
8.You know too much, and should be recruited because the secrecy of the Shadow World has already been compromised for you.
9. You know too little; it would be helpful to the Shadowhunters if you knew more.
10. You know exactly the right amount, making you a natural recruit.
11. You possess a natural resistance to glamour magic and must be recruited to keep you quiet and provide you with some basic protection.
12. You have a compound last name already and have convinced someone important that yours is a Shadowhunter family and the Shadowhunteriness has just been weakened by generations of bad breeding.
13. You had a torrid affair with a member of the Nephilim council and now he's trying to cover his tracks.
14. Shadowhunters are concerned they are no longer haughty and condescending enough-have sought you out to add a much needed boost of haughty condescension.
15. You have been bitten by a radioactive Shadowhunter, giving you the proportional strength and speed of a Shadowhunter.
16. Large bearded man on flying motorcycle appeared to take you away to Shadowhunting school.
17. Your mom has been in hiding from your evil dad, and you found out you're a Shadowhunter only a few weeks ago.
That's right. Seventeen reasons. Because that's how many I came up with. Now run off, little Shadowhunter, and learn how to murder things. And be nice to Downworlders.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Shadowhunter's Codex)
“
There are two Paths to the Innermost: the Way of the Mystic, which is the way of devotion and meditation, a solitary and subjective path; and the way of the occultist, which is the way of the intellect, of concentration, and of trained will; upon this path the co-operation of fellow workers is required, firstly for the exchange of knowledge, and secondly because ritual magic plays an important part in this work, and for this the assistance of several is needed in most of the greater operations. The mystic derives his knowledge through the direct communion of his higher self with the Higher Powers; to him the wisdom of the occultist is foolishness, for his mind does not work in that way; but, on the other hand, to a more intellectual and extrovert type, the method of the mystic is impossible until long training has enabled him to transcend the planes of form. We must therefore recognize these two distinct types among those who seek the Way of Initiation, and remember that there is a path for each.
”
”
Dion Fortune (Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate)
“
Those without the gate frequently question the wisdom and right of the occultist to guard his knowledge by the imposition of oaths of secrecy. We are so accustomed to see the scientist give his beneficent discoveries freely to all mankind that we feel that humanity is wronged and defrauded if any knowledge be kept secret by its discoverers and not at once made available for all who desire to share in it.
The knowledge is reserved in order that humanity may be protected from its abuse at the hands of the unscrupulous.
”
”
Dion Fortune (Esoteric Orders and Their Work and The Training and Work of the Initiate)
“
She said that no system based on arcana or esoteric knowledge would survive this age. No new revealed religion could take hold in it.
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Anne Rice (Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles #11))
“
This was always the case when people asked if you knew what something meant. They didn’t want you to know it. They wanted to be able to explain it themselves, to prove themselves bearers of esoteric knowledge.
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Rivers Solomon (An Unkindness of Ghosts)
“
Think of a world of people born blind who, therefore, know only those objects and relations that exist through the sense of touch. Go among them, and speak to them of colors and the other relations that exist only through light and for the sense of sight. You will convey nothing to their minds, and this will be the more fortunate if they tell you so, for you will then quickly notice your mistake and, if unable to open their eyes, you will cease talking in vain . . . .
”
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Rudolf Steiner (The Essential Rudolf Steiner: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man; An Esoteric Cosmology; ... Education; How to Know Higher Worlds)
“
All this so-called esoteric knowledge about chakras, energy field, kundalini, astral bodies, is dangerous as knowledge.
As an experience, it is totally different thing.
Don't acquire it as knowledge.
If it is needed for your spiritual growth, it will come to you in its right time, and then it will be an experience.
”
”
Osho (The Chakra Book: Energy and Healing Power of the Subtle Body)
“
Can we perceive those inorganic beings, don Juan?" I asked. "We certainly can," he replied. "Sorcerers do it at will. Average people do it, but they don't realize that they're doing it because they are not conscious of the existence of a twin world. When they think of a twin world, they enter into all kinds of mental masturbation, but it has never occurred to them that their fantasies have their origin in a subliminal knowledge that all of us have: that we are not alone.
”
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Carlos Castaneda (The Active Side of Infinity)
“
At the opposite pole to this nature of shadows, madness fascinates because it is knowledge. It is knowledge, first, because all these absurd figures are in reality elements of a difficult, hermetic, esoteric learning. These strange forms are situated, from the first, in the space of the Great Secret, and the Saint Anthony who is tempted by them is not a victim of the violence of desire but of the much more insidious lure of curiosity; he is tempted by that distant and intimate knowledge which is offered, and at the same time evaded, by the smile of the gryllos; his backward movement is nothing but that step by which he keeps from crossing the forbidden limits of knowledge; he knows already—and
”
”
Michel Foucault (Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason)
“
All you need to know about the light is in being in the dark.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“
Woman is a beam of the divine Light. She is not the being whom sensual desires takes as its object. She is Creator, it should be said. She is not a creature. Great Fatima-ul- Zehra ( Means of Fatima the Radiant, Brightest Star, Star of Venus, The Evening Star), the daughter of the Prophet, is the secret in Sufism. She is the Hujjat of Ali (JJ). In other words, she establishes the esoteric sense of his knowledge and guides those who attain to it.
Through her perfume, we breathe paradise. Though she was his daughter, the Prophet Muhammad (SAWW) called her “Um Abi’ha” (mother of her father). What mystery was the Prophet hinting at by this statement? While Fatima Zahra ( Salam -ullah – alleha ) was Muhammad’s (SAWW) daughter. The spiritual Fatima Al-Batool ( the divine virgin) her house is the living Ka’ba.
”
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Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
“
Acting with egos and ignorance gives rise to irresponsible actions that break cosmic principles, which result in living under more laws and having greater suffering. But the more individuals in a society live in accordance with cosmic principles, the fewer laws that society needs, and the more elevated and free it becomes.
”
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Belsebuub (Searching Within: Taking the Way of Self-Discovery for the Journey to Source)
“
It was a fitting animal for a priest. Cats guard the secrets of the otherworld and are liaisons with mystic realms. Protectors of esoteric knowledge, cats can open the gates through which a priest can see the future and gain insight.
”
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M.J. Rose (Seduction (Reincarnationist, #5))
“
Much must remain esoteric and veiled. The risks of too much knowledge are far greater than the menace of too little. With knowledge comes responsibility and power,—two things for which the race is not yet ready. Therefore, all we can do is to study and correlate with what wisdom and discretion may be ours, using the knowledge that may come for the good of those we seek to help, and recognising that in the wise use of knowledge comes increased capacity to receive the hidden wisdom.
”
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Alice A. Bailey (Initiation, Human & Solar: Unabridged)
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There is a deep urge in man to know things which are worthless, to know things which make you feel special—because only you know those things and nobody else does. Man wants to be special, and nothing makes you more special than so-called esoteric knowledge. That is why esoteric knowledge remains important. All kinds of rubbish go on in the name of esoteric knowledge—that the earth is hollow, that inside the earth there are great civilizations. And there are people who still believe in it, and in many more such stories.
”
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Osho (The Book of Wisdom: The Heart of Tibetan Buddhism. Commentaries on Atisha's Seven Points of Mind Training)
“
I believe I’m very normal. I’m hyper-normal. I’m more normal than anyone else I know. I think my thoughts, my indulgences, my desires, my pleasures may at first appear different, but that is only because they are more normal, not because they are more esoteric.
I believe I am bored when other people are bored, only faster. I am interested when others are interested, only more interested. But I also think I’m less, rather than more, intelligent than other people.
By indulging my interests through my life, and perhaps because of rather than despite many failures, I have been able to design my life.
”
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Richard Saul Wurman (Information Anxiety 2 (Hayden/Que))
“
Historically, shamans have always been part of the society where they lived, taking care of its problems, whenever they were allowed to operate. For centuries shamanic cultures have been persecuted in the western world until they were almost entirely exterminated. They have managed to survive in secrecy or through complex esoteric camouflage. Nowadays there seems to be more freedom and this ancient knowledge can re-emerge and be used in our own cultural context and not relegated somewhere else. The world needs shamans able to function on the roads, among the electronic equipment and engines, in the squares and markets of our contemporary society.
”
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Franco Santoro (Astroshamanism: A Journey into the Inner Universe (1))
“
Thought must be permeated with feeling; otherwise it will not pass into the realm of soul and it will be stillborn thought.
”
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Rudolf Steiner (The Essential Rudolf Steiner: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man; An Esoteric Cosmology; ... Education; How to Know Higher Worlds)
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Perhaps Aristotle’s most widely-read work is his esoteric treatise on aesthetics, the Poetics. According to his analysis of tragic poetry (a section on comedy was either lost or never completed), the theatrical audience experiences katharsis (“purgation”) of the heightened emotions of pity and fear as the tragic hero, a basically good but flawed aristocrat, is brought down by his own “error of judgment.
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The New York Times (The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference for the Curious Mind)
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So-called gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church. By contrast, persecution, even the bloodiest, posed far less of a threat to the Church’s continuing purity and further development. Gnosticism had its roots in late antiquity, drew on oriental and Jewish sources, and multiplied into innumerable esoteric doctrines and sects. Then, like a vampire, the parasite took hold of the youthful bloom and vigour of Christianity. What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church. Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’ (‘the spiritual’, ‘the pneumatic’); the common folk (‘the psychic’) were left to get on with their crude practices. It is not hard to see how this kind of compartmentalizing of the Church’s members, indeed of mankind as a whole, inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.
”
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Irenaeus of Lyons (The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies)
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Offer not your right hand easily to anyone. This warns the disciple to keep his own counsel and not offer wisdom and knowledge (his right hand) to such as are incapable of appreciating them. The hand here represents Truth, which raises those who have fallen because of ignorance; but as many of the unregenerate do not desire wisdom they will cut off the hand that is extended in kindness to them. Time alone can effect the redemption of the ignorant masses.
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Pythagorus
“
People's imaginations have continued to work, right up to our own day; hence the incredible crop of fanciful allegations attributing to the Templars every kind of esoteric rite and belief, from the most ancient to the most vulgar, every variety of alchemical or magical knowledge, all kinds of initiation and affiliation rituals, those already in existence at the time and those yet to be conceived—in a word, all the "secrets" devised the slake the thirst for mystery inherent in human nature. This thirst, by a kind of instinctual reaction, seems never to be stronger than in those eras when people appear to reject all mysteries: let us recall that it was in Descartes' own day that trials for witchcraft were most numerous; that it was at the beginning of the rationalistic eighteenth century that Freemasonry was born; that our own scientific twentieth century is equally the century in which sects have proliferated, occultism has undergone a renaissance, and so on.
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Régine Pernoud (Templars: Knights of Christ)
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Obviously, therefore, we must be able to transcribe what is in us into our mental and objective consciousness, by establishing a relationship between the life in us and observation of that life in Nature. This we find supremely well expressed by the ancient Egyptians. It is a knowledge of magic, pure and sane, which can lead rapidly toward the spiritual goal of our lives, owing to the fact that we can evoke, by means of the sympathy of analogues in our surroundings, the consciousness of the heart latent in us.
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R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Esoterism and Symbol)
“
Man is made of thought, of will and of love: he can think truth or error, he can will good or evil, he can love beauty or ugliness. Now thought of the true — or knowledge of the real — demands on the one hand willing of the good and on the other love of the beautiful, hence virtue, for virtue is none other than beauty of soul; that is why the Greeks, who were aesthetes as well as thinkers, included virtue within philosophy. Without beauty of soul, all willing is sterile, it is petty and closes itself to grace; and in an analogous manner: without effort of will, all spiritual thought ultimately remains superficial and ineffectual and leads to pretension. Virtue coincides with a sensibility proportioned — or conformed — to the Truth, and that is why the soul of the sage soars above things and thereby above itself, if one may put it thus; whence the disinterestedness, nobleness and generosity of great souls. Quite clearly, the consciousness of metaphysical principles cannot go hand in hand with moral pettiness, such as ambition and hypocrisy : "Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.
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Frithjof Schuon (Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism)
“
It's funny how all the wisest people on Earth always comes back to this thought, know thyself, thy body, thy mind, they soul, thy emotions, thy history, thy spirit... the only knowledge that will ever serve you is the knowledge you yourself know of, and hopefully put into practice.
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Stephane St-Pierre (Musings of a Natural Philosopher: The Light Edition)
“
It's funny how all the wisest people on Earth always comes back to this thought, know thyself, thy body, they mind, they soul, thy emotions, thy history, thy spirit... the only knowledge that will ever serve you is the knowledge you yourself know of, and hopefully put into practice.
”
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Stephane St-Pierre (MUSINGS OF A NATURAL PHILOSOPHER - THE LIGHT EDITION - BOOK DEUX)
“
When we want to express our knowledge, we must be able to translate or reduce it to concrete terms, accessible to our senses and rational through the cerebral function. “Sympathetic’’ experience always remains uncertain and open to discussion as long as it is not “objectified” experience.
”
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R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Esoterism and Symbol)
“
Fatima tul Zehra (Fatima the Radiant, Fatima the Brightest Star, Fatima-Star of Venus, Fatima-The Evening Star), the daughter of the Prophet, is the secret in Sûfîsm. She is the Hujjat of 'Ali. In other words, she establishes the esoteric sense of his knowledge and guides those who attain to it. Through her perfume, we breathe paradise. Though she was his daughter, the Prophet Muhammad called her Um Abi'ha (mother of her father). What mystery was the Prophet hinting at by this statement? While Fatima Zehra was Muhammad's daughter, the Rasulallah (Prophet of God - Muhammad) understood that his gnosis was bestowed upon him from the Divine Feminine.
”
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Laurence Galian (Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess)
“
One may at least surmise that this esoteric teaching had a close and direct connection with wisdom, and that it did not only appeal to reason or to logic, as is the case with philosophy, which for this reason has been called rational knowledge - the philosophers of antiquity maintained that rational knowledge, that is, philosophy, is not the highest degree of knowledge, is not wisdom.
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René Guénon (Know Thyself)
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Of course poor people have deficits, researchers could now reply. That’s what poverty is: a lack of resources, both internal and external. But those deficits, whether they were in income or knowledge or even more esoteric qualities like self-control or perseverance or an optimistic outlook, were not moral failings. The appropriate response was not to deny them or excuse them, nor was it to criticize them and cluck about them and wag a finger at them. It was to solve them.
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Paul Tough (Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America)
“
The Yogis possess great knowledge regarding the use and abuse of the reproductive principle in both sexes. Some hints of this esoteric knowledge have filtered out and have been used by Western writers on the subject, and much good has been accomplished in this way. In this little book we cannot do more than touch upon the subject, and omitting all except a bare mention of theory, we will give a practical breathing exercise whereby the student will be enabled to transmute the reproductive energy into vitality for the entire system, instead of dissipating and wasting it in lustful indulgences in or out of the marriage relations. The reproductive energy is creative energy, and may be taken up by the system and transmuted into strength and vitality, thus serving the purpose of regeneration instead of generation. If the young men of the Western world understood these underlying principles they would be saved much misery and unhappiness in after years, and would be stronger mentally, morally and physically.
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William Walker Atkinson (The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath)
“
There are occult Esoteric Metaphysics (the secret and most confidential aspect of occult teachings) and Mystical Sciences practiced by mystical adepts, Living Grand Masters. This is the cosmological verdict of the Order of Astral and Terrestrial Hierarchy universal occult recognition. Exoteric is public occult teachings. An Adept uses the Technique of the Master. Hell is called After-Life-Hallucination. There are entities, spirits, demons, demi-gods, Archangels and other names for evil beings. A Guru is a spiritual Master.
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”
COMPTON GAGE (Devil's Inception)
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What, then, is active imagination? In practice it’s exactly what Jung did in his visions and conversations with inner figures such as Philemon, Ka, and Salome mentioned above: entering a fantasy and talking with one’s “self”—at least a part of oneself “normally” left unconscious—asking questions and receiving knowledge that one—“you”—did not know. In many ways, it’s something we engage in often already, but in a shallow, fleeting way, when we “ask ourselves” what we think or will do about a situation. More abstractly, it’s a method of consciously entering into a dialogue with the unconscious, which triggers the transcendent function, a vital shift in consciousness, brought about through the union of the conscious and unconscious minds. Unexpected insights and self-renewal are some of the results of the transcendent function. It achieves what I call that elusive “Goldilocks” condition, the “just right” of having the conscious and unconscious minds work together, rather than being at odds. In the process it produces a third state more vivid and “real” than either; in it we recognize what consciousness should be like and see our “normal” state as at best a muddling through. We’ve already seen how the transcendent function helped Jung when faced with the dilemma of having to choose between science and the humanities. Then it operated through a dream, producing the mandala-like symbol of the giant radiolarian. In the simplest sense, the transcendent function is our built-in means of growth, psychological and spiritual—it’s “transcendent” only in the sense that it “transcends” the frequent deadlock between the conscious and unconscious minds—and is a development of what Jung earlier recognized as the “prospective tendencies in man.
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Gary Lachman (Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life & Teachings)
“
So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'.
And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious.
”
”
Miguel Serrano
“
Bartky’s theory is concerned with the consciousness or knowledge women can develop about sexist injustice. She draws what may appear to be an esoteric distinction between benighted victims, who do not recognize that they or others are being victimized, and knowing victims, who recognize the workings of injustice in their own lives and in the world. Yet this distinction is compelling as it situates experiences of victimization as sources of knowledge about power and ethics, rather than as mere individual episodes that are best downplayed or forgotten, yielding nothing of value for political and ethical reflection.
”
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Rebecca Stringer (Knowing Victims (Women and Psychology))
“
The contemporary Christian Church, precisely, has understood them in this' 'wrong way, to the letter, 'like the Jews,' exoterically, not esoterically. Nevertheless to say 'like the Jews' is an error. One would have to say 'as the Jews want.' Because they also possess an exotericism, for their masses, represented by the Torah and Talmud, and an esotericism, in the Cabala (which means: 'Received Tradition'), in the Zohar ('brightness'), the Merkaba or Chariot being the most secret part of the Cabala which only initiated rabbis know and use as the powerful tool of their magic. We have already said that the Cabala reached them from elsewhere, like everything else, in the Middle Ages, even though they tell us otherwise, using and transforming it in concordance with their Archetype. The Hasidim, from Poland, represent an exclusively esoteric sect of Judaism.
Islam also has its esoteric magic, represented by Sufism and the sect of the Assassins, Hassanists, oflran. They interpret the Koran symbolically. And it was because of contact with this sect of the 'Old Man of the Mountain' that the Templars felt compelled to secede more and more from the direction of Rome, centering themselves in their Esoteric Kristianity and Mystery of the Gral. This was also why Rome destroyed them, like the esoteric Cathars (katharos = pure in Greek), the Bogomils, the Manichees and the gnostics.
In the Church of Rome, called Catholic, there only remains a soulless ritual of the Mass, as a liturgical shell that no longer reaches the Symbol, which no longer touches it, no longer puts it into action. The Nordic contribution has been lost, destroyed by prejudice and the ethnological persecution of Nordicism, Germanism and the complete surrender to Judaism.
Zen Buddhism preserves the esotericism of Buddha. In Japan Shinto and Zen are practiced by a racially superior warrior caste, the Samurai. The most esoteric side of Hinduism is found in Tantrism, especially in the Kaula or Kula Order.
So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'.
And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious.
”
”
Miguel Serrano
“
The author of Eros and Psyche, Lucius Apuleius, an initiate of the ancient mystery schools touched on the knowledge of the soul to achieve union with the Divine, by the agency of a spiritual love. Lucius Apuleius lived in Carthage, and his name was still mentioned 200 years after his death in this North African city; until St. Augustine, the most influential writer of Catholicism came along. Through the centuries Christianity flourished, and the esoteric wisdom went into obscurity, along with the story of Eros and Psyche.
The story deals with subjects the church frowns upon, having a direct contact with the immortal soul, and connecting with the esoteric divine, and not the divine of the Catholic church. Up until this present moment, it's not a coincidence the story of Eros and Psyche has been considered a child's fable for almost 2,000 years.
”
”
A Psycho-Spiritual- Author- Certified-Meditation, Laughter, & Kundalini Tantra Yoga Teacher. (Eros and Psyche: An Ancient Soul Mate/Twin Flame Story)
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Occultism in general is not concerned with the history of a single evolutionary cycle or period but with the inner history of human evolution as a whole. True, occultism is at pains to discover the first manifestations of the life of our planetary system and the earlier stages of man's existence, but it looks forward through the millennia to a divine humanity, to a time when the Earth herself will have changed in substance and in form. Is it possible to predict the far distant future? It is indeed possible, because all that has finally to become physical in the future, already exists in germ, in archetypal form. The plan of evolution is contained in archetypal thought. Nothing comes into being in the physical world which in its broad lines has not been foreseen and prefigured in the devachanic world. Individual freedom and power of initiative depends upon the manner of the realisation of this truth.
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Rudolf Steiner (The Essential Rudolf Steiner: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man; An Esoteric Cosmology; ... Education; How to Know Higher Worlds)
“
The heliocentric system is not exclusively modern; I will not be telling you anything new in recalling here that Aristarchus of Samos and Hipparcus—and later al-Battani—taught it; nonetheless one understands why the ancients finally preferred the geocentric system: this system corresponds to immediate experience, hence to sacred symbolisms, whereas the opposite system is beyond most men’s capacity for assimilation and entails serious dangers—it “troubles the repose of the Gods”, as the opponents of Aristarchus said—which does not mean it is astronomically incorrect. In any case, pushing scientific curiosity too far—to the detriment of contemplation and the inward knowledge of appearances—is imprudence and Luciferianism, and it is partly for this reason that the ancients instinctively retained the geocentric doctrine.
It goes without saying that the knowledge of realities that are normally unknown and contrary to current experience is a matter of indifference from the point of view of pure intellectuality and esoterism; if I bring it up here, it is simply because the context more or less requires it.
Extract from a letter - 22 June 1964.
”
”
Frithjof Schuon
“
I will rouse you from your sleep, you who have given yourself up to recitation, who have taken the study of the Qur’an as a practice, who have seized upon some of its outward meanings and sentences.
How long will you wander about the shore of the sea with your eyes closed to its wonders?
Was it not for you to sail through its depths in order to see its amazing things, to travel to its islands to pick its delicacies, to dive to its bottom and become rich from obtaining its jewels? Don’t you despise yourself for losing out on its pearls and jewels as you continue to look only to its shores and esoteric aspects? Haven’t you heard that the Qur’an is an ocean from which the knowledge of all ages branches out just as rivers and streams branch out from the shores of the ocean?
Don’t you envy the happiness of people who have plunged into its overflowing waves and seized red sulfur, who have dived into its depths and taken out red rubies, shining pearls and green chrysolite, who have roamed its shores and gathered gray ambergris and fresh blooming aloes wood, who have clung to its islands and found an abundance in their animals of the greatest antidote and pungent musk?
”
”
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
“
Although Zolla no longer associated with Julius Evola, he nevertheless arranged for me to meet Italy’s most famous crypto-traditionalist writer who was a very controversial figure because of his espousal of the cause of Mussolini during the Second World War. I had already read some of Evola’s works, many of which are now being translated into English and are attracting some attention in philosophical circles. But based on the image I had of him as an expositor of traditional doctrines including Yoga, I was surprised to see him, now crippled as a result of a bomb explosion in 1945, living in the center of Rome in a large old apartment which was severe and fairly dark and without works of traditional art which I had expected to see around him. He had piercing eyes and gazed directly at me as we spoke about knightly initiation, myths and symbols of ancient Persia, traditional alchemy and Hermeticism and similar subjects. While he extolled the ancient Romans and their virtues, he spoke pejoratively about his contemporary Italians. When I asked him what happened to those Roman virtues, he said they traveled north to Germany and we were left with Italian waiters singing o sole mio! He also seemed to have little knowledge or interest in esoteric Christianity and refuse to acknowledge the presence of a sapiental current in Christianity. It was surprising for me to see an Italian sitting a few minutes from the Vatican, with his immense knowledge of various esoteric philosophies from the Greek to the Indian, being so impervious to the inner realities of the tradition so close to his home.
”
”
Seyyed Hossein Nasr
“
Jung’s remarks about how in North Africa he “felt cast back many centuries to an infinitely more naïve world of adolescents who were preparing, with the aid of a slender knowledge of the Koran, to emerge from their original state of twilight consciousness” may seem politically incorrect from our oversensitive perspective, but they highlight the core insight of the trip. Although Jung knew a great deal about mythology and mythological thinking, his own thinking was decidedly Western and rational—he described himself as a “thorough Westerner”26—and in many ways, Jung was a typical “left-brainer,” with his detestation of “fantasy,” his formality and punctuality, his precision and need to be “scientific.” In his travels in North Africa, and later Taos and Central Africa, Jung was looking for signs of a consciousness not as differentiated from the unconscious matrix—what in the Seven Sermons he called “the Pleroma”—as ours, with its sharp distinction between conscious and unconscious. What Jung found in places such as Tunis, Sousse, Sfax, and the oasis city of Tozeur was a completely different sense of time. Coming from the land of cuckoo clocks and appointment books, this must have been a shock. Jung had entered a “dream of a static, age-old existence,” a kind of perpetual now, a condition associated with the right brain, which lacks a sense of time; there was none of the incessant activity that characterized even a relatively small city like Zürich. Jung enjoyed the contrast, which gave him an opportunity to entertain criticisms of modernity, a practice that would become something of a habit in later years, but he also felt this timelessness was threatened. Thinking of his pocket watch, “the symbol of Europe’s accelerated tempo,” Jung worried that the “god of time” and its demon, progress, would soon “chop into bits and pieces”—hours, minutes, seconds—the “duration” he sensed here and which was the “closest thing to eternity.
”
”
Gary Lachman (Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life & Teachings)
“
Most disconcerting of all were those experiences in which the patient's consciousness appeared to expand beyond the usual boundaries of the ego and explore what it was like to be other living things and even other objects. For example, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced she had assumed the identity of a female prehistoric reptile. She not only gave a richly detailed description of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the portion of the male of the species' anatomy she found most sexually arousing was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head. Although the woman had no prior knowledge of such things, a conversation Grof had with a zoologist later confirmed that in certain species of reptiles, colored areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal. Patients were also able to tap into the consciousness of their relatives and ancestors. One woman experienced what it was like to be her mother at the age of three and accurately described a frightening event that had befallen her mother at the time. The woman also gave a precise description of the house her mother had lived in as well as the white pinafore she had been wearing—all details her mother later confirmed and admitted she had never talked about before. Other patients gave equally accurate descriptions of events that had befallen ancestors who had lived decades and even centuries before. Other experiences included the accessing of racial and collective memories. Individuals of Slavic origin experienced what it was like to participate in the conquests of Genghis Khan's Mongolian hordes, to dance in trance with the Kalahari bushmen, to undergo the initiation rites of the Australian aborigines, and to die as sacrificial victims of the Aztecs. And again the descriptions frequently contained obscure historical facts and a degree of knowledge that was often completely at odds with the patient's education, race, and previous exposure to the subject. For instance, one uneducated patient gave a richly detailed account of the techniques involved in the Egyptian practice of embalming and mummification, including the form and meaning of various amulets and sepulchral boxes, a list of the materials used in the fixing of the mummy cloth, the size and shape of the mummy bandages, and other esoteric facets of Egyptian funeral services. Other individuals tuned into the cultures of the Far East and not only gave impressive descriptions of what it was like to have a Japanese, Chinese, or Tibetan psyche, but also related various Taoist or Buddhist teachings.
”
”
Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe)
“
The Golem
If (as affirms the Greek in the Cratylus)
the name is archetype of the thing,
in the letters of “rose” is the rose,
and all the Nile flows through the word.
Made of consonants and vowels,
there is a terrible Name,
that in its essence encodes God’s all,
power, guarded in letters, in hidden syllables.
Adam and the stars knew it in the Garden.
It was corroded by sin (the Cabalists say),
time erased it, and generations
have forgotten.
The artifice and candor of man go on without end.
We know that there was a time in
which the people of God searched for the Name
through the ghetto’s midnight hours.
But not in that manner of those others
whose vague shades insinuate into vague history,
his memory is still green and lives,
Judá the Lion the rabbi of Prague.
In his thirst to know the knowledge of God
Judá permutated the alphabet through complex variations
and in the end
pronounced the name that is the Key
the Door, the Echo, the Guest, and the Palace,
over a mannequin shaped with awkward hands,
teaching it the arcane knowledge of
symbols, of Time and Space.
The simulacrum raised its sleepy eyelids,
saw forms and colors that it did not understand,
and confused by our babble
made fearful movements.
Gradually it was seen to be (as we are)
imprisoned in a reverberating net of
Before, Later, Yesterday, While, Now, Right, Left,
I, You, Those, Others.
The Cabalists who celebrated this mysterium,
this vast creature, named it Golem.
(Written about by Scholem,
in a learned passage of his volume.)
The rabbi explained the universe to him,
“This is my foot, this yours, and this the rope,”
but all that happened, after years,
was that the creature swept the synagogue badly.
Perhaps there was an error in the word
or in the articulation of the Sacred Name;
in spite of the highest esoteric arts
this apprentice of man did not learn to speak.
Its eyes uncanny,
less like man than dog and much less than dog but thing
following the rabbi through the doubtful
shadows of the stones of its confinement.
There was something
abnormal and coarse in the Golem,
at its step the rabbi’s cat fled in fear.
(That cat not from Scholem but of the blind seer)
It would ape the rabbi’s devotions,
raising its hands to the sky,
or bend over, stupidly smiling,
into hollow Eastern salaams.
The rabbi watched it tenderly but
with some horror. How (he said)
could I engender this laborious son?
Better to have done nothing, this is insanity.
Why did I give to the infinite
series a symbol more? To the coiled skein
on which the eternal thing is wound,
I gave another cause, another effect, another grief.
In this hour of anguish and vague light,
on the Golem our eyes have stopped.
Who will say the things to us that God felt,
at the sight of his rabbi in Prague?
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges
“
An important aspect of the party’s claim to cultural vanguard status was its possession of esoteric knowledge, namely Marxist-Leninist ideology. Knowledge of the basics of historical and dialectical materialism was a prerequisite for all Communists. What this meant in practice was a grasp of Marx’s theory of historical development, which showed that the driving power of history was class struggle; that capitalism throughout the world must ultimately succumb to proletarian revolution, as it had done in Russia in 1917; and that in the course of time the revolutionary proletarian dictatorship would lead the society to socialism. To outsiders, the boiled-down Marxism of Soviet political literacy courses might look simplistic, almost catechismic. To insiders, it was a “scientific” worldview that enabled its possessors to rid themselves and others of all kinds of prejudice and superstition—and incidentally master an aggressive debating style characterized by generous use of sarcasm about the motives and putative “class essence” of opponents. Smugness and tautology, along with polemical vigor, were among the most notable characteristics of Soviet Marxism.
”
”
Sheila Fitzpatrick (Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s)
“
Furthermore, the way in which the two (Freud and Jung) corresponds invoke Fliess's ghost leaves no doubt on the subject. They threaten each other with it between the lines, they frighten each other with it, and they do so because they know (but with a secret, esoteric knowledge that never goes beyond the bounds of the private correspondence) that Fliess had "gone mad" owing to his correspondence with Freud.
”
”
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (The Freudian Subject)
“
There was esoteric knowledge to being a burglar—broad areas that took some thought and skill. There was choosing the house, entering the house, and finding the items that were worth taking. Elle Stowell was good at all three.
”
”
Thomas Perry (The Burglar)
“
Call it esoteric, it's an enlightenment I the Word of God of what's going on in the world of government. We all want to be equal to one another, not better nor worst for equity compels performance. But to have that one must remember "Diligence is the responsibility of the party who stands to lose by lack thereof". So believe in God and your lack becomes a cup of overflowing abundance.
”
”
Jose R. Coronado (The Land Flowing With Milk And Honey)
“
Although we refer to the magical ‘books’ of Ancient Egypt, these were in fact scrolls, more often lengths of papyrus stuck together and rolled up, but occasionally parchments of calf vellum. These books were regarded as extremely esoteric, and certainly not for the eyes of common people. Some were said to have been found in secret places, such as forgotten tombs and hidden caskets, and to record the actual words of Thoth or legendary sages and priests. It is likely that the priests considered their own magic to be most effective and sacred, and they kept their knowledge secret in order to make themselves appear more powerful in the eyes of less priveleged individuals. They often wrote down their spells in a kind of code, referring to their ingredients by alternative names in order to confuse any unintiated person who might try to read them.
”
”
Storm Constantine (Bast and Sekhmet: Eyes of Ra)
“
Ilm is rather a comprehensive term, for the Prophet has said:
“Knowledge consists of three things, a clear verse (of the Qur-
ân), a
well-established sunnah, and a fair religious duty ( farîdah).” Also, Jesus
has said: “There are three (kinds of ) knowers (-
âlim), a knower of God,
a knower of the command of God, and a knower of the command
of God who is at the same time a knower of God.” Consequently,
there are three kinds of knowledge, namely, the knowledge of what is
lawful and what is unlawful, which is the legal knowledge of the rules
governing this world and which is exoteric material knowledge; the
knowledge of the rules governing the other world, which is esoteric
intuitive knowledge; and the knowledge of the divine rules as they
affect God’s creation in both this world and the other world.
”
”
Franz Rosenthal (Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Brill Classics in Islam))
“
Around the corner was Temple Church, built in the twelfth century by the Knights Templar as their English headquarters and the four inns of court were nearby. This was an area of ancient power and money, where the power lay with those who could tell the best story. Those who understood all the rules and how to bend them to their will, the people who had the knowledge of the esoteric guidelines, both legal and religious, and could help you navigate those murky waters between salvation and damnation. For a fee.
”
”
Sarah Painter (The Silver Mark (Crow Investigations #2))
“
these creatures grow up with a peculiar knowledge. They know that they have been born in an infinite variety. They know, for instance, that in their genetic material they are born with hundreds of different chromosome formations at the point in each cell that we would say determines their "sex". These creatures don't just come in XX or XY; they also come in XXY and XYY and XXX plus a long list of "mosaic" variations in which some cells in a creature's body have one combination and other cells have another. Some of these creatures are born with chromosomes that aren't even quite X or Y because a little bit of one chromosome goes and gets joined to another. There are hundreds of different combinations, and though all are not fertile, quite a number of them are. The creatures in this world enjoy their individuality; they delight in the fact that they are not divisible into distinct categories. So when another newborn arrives with an esoterically rare chromosomal formation, there is a little celebration: "Aha," they say, "another sign that we are each unique."
These creatures also live with the knowledge that they are born with a vast range of genital formations. Between their legs are tissue structures that vary along a continuum, from clitorises with a vulva through all possible combinations and gradations to penises with scrotal sac. These creatures live with an understanding that their genitals all developed prenatally from exactly the same little nub of embryonic tissue called a genital tubercle, which grew and developed under the influence of varying amounts of the hormone androgen. These creatures honor and respect everyone's natural-born genitalia –including what we would describe as a microphallus or a clitoris several inches long. What these creatures find amazing and precious is that because everyone's genitals stem from th same embryonic tissue, the nerves inside all their genitals got wired very much alike, so these nerves of touch just go crazy upon contact in a way that resonates completely between them. "My gosh," they think, "you must feel something in your genital tubercle that intensely resembles what I'm feeling in my genital tubercle." Well, they don't think that in so many words; they're actually quite heavy into their feelings at that point; but they do feel very connected –throughout all their wondrous variety.
I could go on. I could tell you about the variety of hormones that course through their bodies in countless different patterns and proportions, both before birth and throughout their lives –the hormones that we call "sex hormones" but that they call "individuality inducers." I could tell you how these creatures think about reproduction: For part of their lives, some of these creatures are quite capable of gestation, delivery, and lactation; and for part of their lives, some of them are quite capable of insemination; and for part or all of their lives, some of them are not capable of any of those things – so these creatures conclude that it would be silly to lock anyone into a lifelong category based on a capability variable that may or may not be utilized and that in any case changes over each lifetime in a fairly uncertain and idiosyncratic way. These creatures are not oblivious to reproduction; but nor do they spend their lives constructing a self-definition around their variable reproductive capacities. They don't have to, because what is truly unique about those creatures is that they are capable of having a sense of personal identity without struggling to fit into a group identity based on how they were born. These creatures are quite happy, actually. They don't worry about sorting /other/ creatures into categories, so they don't have to worry about whether they are measuring up to some category they themselves are supposed to belong to.
”
”
John Stoltenberg (Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice)
“
Information is not necessarily knowledge. When it's "chaotic" or wrong, then it's just mental noise…
”
”
Constantinos Prokopiou
“
In the Space (or Experience) of Knowledge, NATURE, Existence, Life, Freedom, Truth, Eternity, all, are synonymous. Only in the realm of the human intellect do all these things mean something different...
”
”
Constantinos Prokopiou
“
The body is not merely the vesture, it is the instrument of the Spirit.
”
”
Rudolf Steiner (The Essential Rudolf Steiner: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man; An Esoteric Cosmology; ... Education; How to Know Higher Worlds)
“
This gives rise to a new symptom, namely a dissociation, or rather the power of a momentary dissociation of three faculties which, in man, are united: the faculties of willing, feeling and thinking. We must learn to separate and to re-unite them at will. So long, for example, as some outer event carries us away with uncontrolled enthusiasm, we are immature, for such enthusiasm comes from the event, not from ourselves, and we may even exercise a shattering influence of which we are not master.
”
”
Rudolf Steiner (The Essential Rudolf Steiner: Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man; An Esoteric Cosmology; ... Education; How to Know Higher Worlds)
“
The dream of Strong Artificial Intelligence—and more specifically the growing interest in the idea that a computer can become conscious and have first-person subjective experiences—has led to a cultural shift. Prophets like Kurzweil believe that we are much closer to cyberconsciousness and superintelligence than most observers acknowledge, while skeptics argue that current AI systems are still extremely primitive and that hopes of conscious machines are pipedreams. Who is right? This book does not attempt to address this question, but points out some philosophical problems and asks some philosophical questions about machine consciousness. One fundamental problem is that we do not understand human consciousness. Many in science and artificial intelligence assume that human consciousness is based on information or computations. Several writers have tried to tackle this assumption, most notably the British physicist Roger Penrose, whose controversial theory suggests that consciousness is based upon noncomputable quantum states in some of the tiniest structures in the brain, called microtubules. Other, perhaps less esoteric thinkers, like Duke’s Miguel Nicolelis and Harvard’s Leonid Perlovsky, are beginning to challenge the idea that the brain is computable. These scientists lead their fields in man-machine interfacing and computer science. The assumption of a computable brain allows artificial intelligence researchers to believe they will create artificial minds. However, despite assuming that the brain is a computational system—what philosopher Riccardo Manzotti calls “the computational stance”—neuroscience is still discovering that human consciousness is nothing like we think it is. For me this is where LSD enters the picture. It turns out that human consciousness is likely itself a form of hallucination. As I have said, it is a very useful hallucination, but a hallucination nonetheless. LSD and psychedelics may help reveal our normal everyday experience for the hallucination that it is. This insight has been argued about for centuries in philosophy in various forms. Immanuel Kant may have been first to articulate it in modern form when he called our perception of the world “synthetic.” The fundamental idea is that we do not have direct knowledge of the external world. This idea will be repeated often in this book, and you will have to get used to it. We only have knowledge of our brain’s creation of that world for us. In other words, what we see, hear, and subsequently think are like movies that our brain plays for us after the fact. These movies are based on perceptions that come into our senses from the external world, but they are still fictions of our brain’s creation. In fact, you might put the disclaimer “based on a true story” in front of each experience you have. I do not wish to imply that I believe in the homunculus argument—what philosopher Daniel Dennett describes as the “Cartesian Theater”—the hypothetical place in the mind where the self becomes aware of the world. I only wish to employ the metaphor to illustrate the idea that there is no direct relationship between the external world and your perception of it.
”
”
Andrew Smart (Beyond Zero and One: Machines, Psychedelics, and Consciousness)
“
The esoteric level of philosophy reads as philosophia, which translates as both a love of knowledge and as the knowledge of love.
”
”
Michael Meade (The Genius Myth)
“
This is my own experience. I have many memories of earlier times in which I was trained. When I was 18 years old I “awoke” in one moment, changing from a rebellious teenager into a seeker and teacher carrying esoteric knowledge that I had brought with me from earlier incarnations. Many Indigo Souls I have met are similar. These incarnations have provided particular training so that you could be of service at this unique juncture in history.
”
”
Ritama Davidson (Indigo Adults: Understanding Who You Are and What You Can Become)
“
Maarifa unayoyatafuta katika Biblia, Kurani au Yoga ('Oriental Yoga': 'esoteric knowledge': maarifa ya kujua siri ya uumbaji wa Mungu ya 'Kabbalah' ya Kiyahudi au 'Kalachakra' ya Kibudha ya bara la Asia; siri ya sayansi ya kurefusha maisha ya mafundisho ya kiroho ya 'Arcanum' ya Misri – au Kemia ya Mungu au 'Alchemy'; mafundisho ya kiroho ya 'Rosicrucia' ya bara la Ulaya tangu mwishoni mwa karne ya kumi na nne; 'sex magic', 'sex magic' inaweza kukupa utajiri au umaskini hivyo kuwa makini; n.k.) ni hekima na busara. Vingine vyote vitajileta vyenyewe.
”
”
Enock Maregesi
“
I worship nature. The moon and the tides. The sun and the stars. The energies that surround us and dwell within us. The esoteric knowledge of our natural world and its flora and fauna.
”
”
Dacha Avelin
“
The goal of any esoteric work must be that of objectivity, first in our understanding of ourselves, and then, as our filters and programs are dislodged, of the world. A true esoteric teaching will, therefore, not only focus on “Know Thyself”, but will also provide knowledge about the reality of our reality. If one or the other of these aspects are missing from a teaching, then you can be certain that it is incomplete, and an incomplete teaching, even if through ignorance of the teacher, even if unconscious, is dangerous.
”
”
Henry See
“
Secret glances are shared by those on the "inside" or esoteric "inner circle", who have literally gone into many lower frequencies simultaneously. This is the "secret glance" of love, which allows the higher to operate in the lower; to "save" those worlds in order to correct the impending takeover of the "Devil and his demons", a metaphor for light and dark "battles" raging today.
”
”
COMPTON GAGE (Devil's Inception)
“
The best place to conceal esoteric information is right in front of us.
”
”
COMPTON GAGE (Devil's Inception)
“
A terrible plague has either killed mankind or transformed them into demons ... and all they want is Compton's soul.
The best place to conceal esoteric information is right in front of us.
”
”
COMPTON GAGE (Devil's Inception)
“
Another fascinating example of esoteric knowledge adopted by the informed to communicate secretly was the use of sign language for the deaf. Unknown to most people today, Renaissance Italian artists had no difficulties working with their hearing-impaired friends and colleagues. Even today, especially in southern Italy, there is a deeply engrained tradition of expressing oneself through nonverbal communication, using hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language in general. Leonardo da Vinci, in his day, encouraged other hearing artists to learn from the expressivity of the deaf.
”
”
Benjamin Blech (The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican)
“
Massive numbers of light-workers are focused on their own Spiritual growth and are not focused on the service work that they Spiritually contracted to do! Massive numbers of lightworkers have their head in the clouds and are too ungrounded! Massive numbers of lightworkers are too much in their mental bodies and focusing too much on esoteric knowledge, and are not fulfilling their Earthly/Spiritual responsibilities of Service work.
”
”
Joshua D. Stone (The Golden Book of Melchizedek: How to Become an Integrated Christ/Buddha in This Lifetime Volume 2)
“
Jeremiah was the godly messenger who warned the corrupt priests of the Holy Temple that their bronze and gold would be taken away and their Temple destroyed unless they cleaned up the corruption within. He is covering his mouth in the signum harpocraticum, a gesture signifying that a profound esoteric knowledge occupies his thoughts.
”
”
Benjamin Blech (The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican)
“
Self-remembrance is vital to be successful esoterically. It is only in those moments when you remember to do it that an inner work actually takes place. If you consider how often this happens and for how many moments through the day, then you will get some idea of how much you are actually working towards self-knowledge.
”
”
Belzebuub (The Peace of the Spirit Within: A Guide to Transform Your Life)
“
The most powerful ancient knowledge has been shrouded within esoteric mystery schools etc
And as a collective humanity have been intentionally dumbed down to disconnect from the ability to harness and transmute energy
Some can partly, but don't realise they're actually doing it
There are lost of names + symbolism for life-force vital energy in every Ancient culture or modern interpretations
Prana
Chi/Qi/Ki
Livity
Essence of life
Via Vitae
Divine breath
Breath of life
Pneuma
Vis Vitalis
Orgone
Ousia
Æether
Vril
Quintessence
The Fifth Element
Electricity
Call it what you will, it's inside of you and around you.
”
”
Henry Joseph-Grant
“
Highly conscious people illuminate paths many never thought to explore
Their profound depth of understanding and insight cuts through the illusions, lies, noise of everyday life
And clarity of thought and breadth of knowledge enables them to see solutions where others see none
It's a distillation of wisdom honed through trials, tribulations, failures and triumphs
This is what makes them formidable
Not their ability to dominate a conversation, but to transform it
To elevate the discourse to realms of thought previously esoteric, obscured or uncharted
”
”
Henry Joseph-Grant
“
Donald John Trump was born on June 14th, 1946.
Donald is derived from the word Domhnall meaning 'world leader' or 'leader of the world' (Gaelic dunno, 'world'; val, 'rule'). John is a Hebrew name that means 'God is gracious'. Trump is a German surname meaning 'trumpet' or 'drum' and it is also and Engish verb meaning 'to excel, surpass, or outdo', as well as an early English variant of the word 'triumph '. As Mary Colbert, who co-authored 'The Trump Prophecies describes, "Donald John Trump's name means 'World Leader Under the Grace of God Who's Leadership Will Ecel, Surpass and Outdo in Triumph.
”
”
Bethanon (Love Joy Trump: A Chorus of Prophetic Voices)
“
The Spirit’s internal testimony does not give the believer private, esoteric knowledge or information that is unavailable to anyone else.
”
”
R.C. Sproul (Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith)
“
And since all knowledge forms a whole, the corollary is never throw anything away. Every doctrine, no matter how esoteric or seemingly irrational or irrelevant, may hold yet another secret to understanding the rest.
”
”
Arthur Herman (The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization)
“
SATAN IS THE FATHER OF LIES BRIGHT AND SHINING Lucifer, aka the devil, is the motivating force behind the New Age movement. The scriptures warn us that he’s very subtle, enticing, and has the ability to transform himself into an angel of light. One of the primary objectives of esoteric practitioners is enlightenment and illumination. This pseudo knowledge makes them feel intelligent and superior. 2 CORINTHIANS 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Satan isn’t a figment of someone’s imagination, he’s an evil entity who’s just as real as you or me. The Bible also tells us he’s a fallen angel who was consumed with pride. ISAIAH 14:12-15 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
”
”
Steven Stillwell (America is Mystery Babylon)
“
Allison Coudert has argued that Leibniz was almost certainly influenced by Jewish Kabbalah, with its own esoteric use of combinatorial procedures for exploring the mysteries of the Godhead through gematria and other arithmosophical theurgies.7 Despite the arcane sources of his inspiration, however, Leibniz was not alone among mainstream early modern philosophers in the quest for a “science of sciences,” nor was he alone among moderns in his quest for secret knowledge, as evidenced, for example, by Newton's vast writings on alchemy. Even Descartes, who argued for a rigid distinction between mind and matter, had insisted on their practical unity at the level of “the living.” As Deleuze puts it in his preface to Malfatti's work, “Beyond a psychology disincarnated in thought, and a physiology mineralized in matter,” even Descartes believed in the possibility of a unified field “where life is defined as knowledge of life, and knowledge as life of knowledge” (MSP, 143). This is the unity, Deleuze asserts, to which Malfatti's account of mathesis as a “true medicine” aspires. Deleuze explicitly refers to mathesis universalis at several key points in Difference and Repetition, particularly in connection with what he calls the “esoteric” history of the calculus (DR, 170). As Christian Kerslake has argued, Deleuze's reference here is not merely to obscure or unusual interpretations of mathematics, but to the decisive significance of Josef Hoëné-Wronski, a Polish French émigré who had elaborated a “messianism” of esoteric knowledge based on the idea that the calculus represented access to the total range of cosmic periodicities and rhythmic imbrications.8 The full implications
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Joshua Ramey (The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal)
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While superstition hates all things, wisdom, with its deeper understanding, loves all things; for it has seen the beauty, the tenderness, and the sweetness which underlie Life’s mystery.
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Manly P. Hall (The Lost Keys of Freemasonry: Unveiling the Mysteries of Freemasonry: Esoteric Knowledge, Symbolism, and Hermetic Philosophy)
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To his audience at John Flaxman’s home Taylor spoke of Orpheus, Hermes, Zoroaster and the ‘perennial philosophy’, the ‘primal wisdom’ of the ancients which Plato had imbibed from the sages who preceded him. Taylor was a one-man Platonic Academy, doing for the esoteric intelligentsia of late eighteenth century London what Marsilio Ficino did for the artists and poets of Renaissance Florence, with his Latin translations of the lost books of Plato and the Hermetica.55 Taylor believed that this primal wisdom was ‘coeval with the universe itself; and however its continuity may be broken by opposing systems, it will make its appearance at different periods of time, as long as the sun himself shall continue to illumine the world’.
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Gary Lachman (Lost Knowledge of the Imagination)
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The path from knowledge, as a general form of domination, to administrative power might seem more circuitous. Does the kind of esoteric knowledge we encounter at Chavín, often founded in hallucinogenic experience, really have anything in common with the accounting methods of the later Inca? It seems highly unlikely – until, that is, we recall that even in much more recent times, qualifications to enter bureaucracies are typically based on some form of knowledge that has virtually nothing to do with actual administration. It’s only important because it’s obscure. Hence in tenth-century China or eighteenth-century Germany, aspiring civil servants had to pass exams on proficiency in literary classics, written in archaic or even dead languages, just as today they will have had to pass exams on rational choice theory or the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. The arts of administration are really only learned later on and through more traditional means: by practice, apprenticeship or informal mentoring.
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David Graeber (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity)
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In Japan, there is no question of the existence of ishin-denshin, a mutual understanding that arises through unspoken communication. The word itself means “what the mind knows, the heart transmits” and suggests the same esoteric heart transmission as is found in Tibetan Buddhism. There, the true understanding of the nature of reality cannot be communicated in words, and the understanding must instead be transmitted from the heart of the master to the student. In Original Wisdom, Robert Wolff described the uncanny knowledge of Malaysian aboriginal tribes. But in these cultures, psychic ability is not a goal to be strived after. Instead, it is merely a fact of living.
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Keith Miller (Subtle Energy: A Handbook of Psychic Energy Manipulation)
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We have been passed down incredibly ancient and insightful knowledge for the betterment of our future worlds.
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Robin S. Baker (Esotericism With an Unconventional Soul: Exploring Philosophy, Spirituality, Science, and Mysticism)
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In general, the chakra system branched into two sections: the Vedic and the Tantric (now alive within Ayurvedic medicine and Tantric yoga, for example). The term tantra comes from two words: tanoti, or to expand; and trayati, or to liberate. Tantra therefore means “to extend knowledge that liberates.” Tantra is a life practice based on teachings about the chakras, kundalini, hatha yoga, astronomy, astrology, and the worship of many Hindu gods and goddesses. Tantric yoga originates in pre-Aryan India, around 3000 to 2500 BC. Many other varieties of Tantric yoga or spirituality have arisen from it, including Tantric Buddhism. Each system derived from Tantric yoga has a unique view on the chakras and their related gods, cosmology, and symbols. The history of chakras, as complex as it sounds so far, is even more complicated. The chakra system is intertwined with—and maybe even created by—several different cultures. Although usually associated with India, Tantric yoga was also practiced by the Dravidians, who originated from Ethiopia, as is revealed in the many similarities between predynastic Egyptian and African practices and ancient Indian Tantric beliefs.6 For example, numerous Hindu deities are rooted in “India’s black civilizations, which is why they are often depicted as black.”7 Some historians point out that early Egyptians were greatly affected by African beliefs,8 and in turn influenced Greek, Jewish, and, later, Islamic and Christian thought, in addition to the Indian Hindu.9 Other cultures also exchanged chakra ideas. Many practices of the early Essenes, a religio-spiritual community dwelling in Palestine in the second century BC through the second century AD, mirrored those of early India.10 The Sufis—Islamic mystics—also employed a system of energy centers, although it involved four centers.11 The Sufis also borrowed the kundalini process from Tantric yoga, as did certain Asian Indian and American Indian groups.12 As we shall see, the Maya Indians of Mexico, the Inca Indians of Peru, and the Cherokee Indians of North America each have their own chakra method. The Maya believe that they actually taught the Hindu the chakra system. The chakra system was brought to the West in yet another roundabout way. It was first thoroughly outlined in the text Sat-Chakra-Nirupana, written by an Indian yogi in the sixteenth century. Arthur Avalon then delivered chakra knowledge to Western culture in his book The Serpent Power, first published in 1919. Avalon drew heavily upon the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana as well as another text, Pakaka-Pancaka. His presentation was preceded by Theosophic Practica, a book written in 1696 by Johann Georg Gichtel, a student of Jakob Bohme, who refers to inner force centers that align with Eastern chakra doctrines.13 Today, many esoteric professionals rely on Anodea Judith's interpretation of Avalon’s work, to which she has added additional information about the psychological aspects of the chakras.
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Cyndi Dale (The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy)
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Similarity has a Heavenly Origin and diversity has earthly roots. Both together become Life, and Knowledge, and Truth.
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Constantinos Prokopiou
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In the realm of spiritual philosophy, where the sacred and the mundane converge, where the mystical dances with the ordinary, there exists an enchanting archetype that beckons us to explore the depths of our souls—the Divine Rabbit. This ethereal creature, a symbol of fertility, rebirth, and spiritual illumination, invites us to embark on a profound journey of self-discovery and transcendence. The Divine Rabbit, with its gentle countenance and nimble grace, embodies the essence of the divine feminine, representing the nurturing and creative aspects of existence. It is a messenger of the cosmic forces, whispering ancient wisdom and guiding us towards the realization of our true nature. With each hop, it traverses the sacred landscapes of our consciousness, leaving in its wake the seeds of transformation and spiritual awakening. This mystical creature, adorned with the symbols of abundance and growth, teaches us the profound truth that spirituality is not confined to lofty realms or esoteric knowledge, but is deeply rooted in the tapestry of our everyday lives. The Divine Rabbit invites us to cultivate a sense of presence and mindfulness, to embrace the magic of the present moment, and to recognize that every breath we take is an opportunity for divine communion. In the Divine Rabbit, we find a profound reflection of our own spiritual journey. Like the rabbit, we too navigate the maze of existence, encountering both obstacles and opportunities along the way. The Divine Rabbit reminds us to approach these challenges with grace, agility, and an unwavering trust in the divine plan. It teaches us that even in the face of adversity, we possess the innate resilience to overcome, to rise above our limitations, and to embrace the boundless potential that resides within us. The Divine Rabbit also serves as a catalyst for profound transformation and rebirth. Just as the rabbit sheds its old fur to make way for new growth, we too are called to release the layers of conditioning, limiting beliefs, and attachments that no longer serve our highest good. The Divine Rabbit encourages us to step into the fullness of our authentic selves, to embrace our innate gifts and talents, and to allow the light of our divine essence to illuminate the world around us. Moreover, the Divine Rabbit invites us to honor the interconnectedness of all beings and the sacredness of every living creature. It teaches us to tread lightly upon the Earth, recognizing that our actions have far-reaching consequences. The Divine Rabbit reminds us of the importance of compassion, kindness, and love towards all beings, for in their eyes, we catch a glimpse of the divine spark that resides within us all. As we embark on our spiritual journey, let us heed the wisdom of the Divine Rabbit. Let us cultivate a sense of wonder and curiosity, allowing ourselves to be guided by the synchronicities and signs that pepper our path. Let us embrace the cycles of life and honor the sacredness of both beginnings and endings. And above all, let us remember that within the heart of the Divine Rabbit resides the eternal flame of our own divine essence, waiting to be kindled and expressed in all its radiant glory. May we follow the path of the Divine Rabbit, awakening to the depths of our being, embracing our divine nature, and embodying the transformative power of love, compassion, and spiritual illumination. In doing so, we dance in harmony with the rhythm of the universe, honoring the sacredness of life, and fulfilling our highest purpose.
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D.L. Lewis
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The Purānas, which are encyclopedic repositories of traditional wisdom, including everything from cosmology to philosophy to stories about kings and holy men. They contain many yogic legends and teachings. The following are especially important: the Bhāgavata-Purāna (also known as Shrīmad-Bhāgavata), Shiva-Purāna, and Devī-Bhāgavata-Purāna (a Tantric work). The so-called Yoga-Upanishads (some twenty texts), most of which were composed after 1000 C.E. and include three extensive works: the Darshana-Upanishad, Yoga-Shikhā-Upanishad and Tejo-Bindu-Upanishad. The texts of Hatha-Yoga, such as the Goraksha-Samhitā, Hatha-Yoga-Pradīpikā, Hatha-Ratna-Avalī, Gheranda-Samhitā, Shiva-Samhitā, Yoga-Yājnavalkya, Yoga-Bīja, Yoga-Shāstra of Dattātreya, Sat-Karma-Samgraha, and the Shiva-Svarodaya, which are all available in English. Vedāntic scriptures like the voluminous Yoga-Vāsishtha, which teaches Jnāna-Yoga, and its traditional abridgment, the Laghu-Yoga-Vāsishtha, both available in English renderings. The literature of the bhakti-mārga or devotional path, which is especially prominent among the Vaishnavas (worshipers of Vishnu) and Shaivas (worshipers of Shiva). There is a considerable literature on bhakti in both Sanskrit and Tamil, as well as various vernacular languages. In particular, I can recommend Nārada’s Bhakti-Sūtra, Shāndilya’s Bhakti-Sūtra, and the extensive Bhāgavata-Purāna, which is a detailed (mythological) account of the birth, life, and death of the God-man Krishna, with many wonderful and inspiring stories of yogins and ascetics. This beautiful work contains the Uddhāva-Gītā, Krishna’s final esoteric instruction to sage Uddhāva. Goddess worship from a Tantric viewpoint is the core of the Devī-Bhāgavata-Purāna, which should also be studied. In addition, sincere Yoga students should also read and ponder the great yogic texts associated with the different schools of Buddhism and Jainism. To encounter the world of Yoga through its literature will challenge the practitioner in many ways: The texts, even in translation and with notes, are often difficult to comprehend and demand serious concentration and perseverance. Yet we do not have to become scholars, but our study (svādhyāya) will show us what it takes to be a real yogin and what magnificent tools Yoga puts at our disposal. It will also further our self-understanding and strengthen our commitment to practice. In his Treasury of Good Advice (1.6), Sakya Pāndita, who was one of the great scholar-adepts of Vajrayāna Buddhism, wrote: Even if one were to die first thing tomorrow, today one must study. Although one may not become a sage in this life, knowledge is firmly accumulated for future lives, just as secured assets can be used later.
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Georg Feuerstein (The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice)
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I was Noblest of all creatures,
I was the Successor,
I was made to believe I am Dust &
I committed a Sin!
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Aiyaz Uddin (The Inward Journey)
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There’s also a more powerful kind of insider knowledge that indicates belonging. I call it “perception.” Perception comes when members learn either from explicit teaching or from experience that certain things are not as they appear to outsiders. Access to this esoteric perception is one of the jewels of membership (formal or informal).
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Charles H. Vogl (The Art of Community: Seven Principles for Belonging)
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Of course, the polarity between love and knowledge is not a rivalry. These two opposites are like the sexes; they are differentiated to create not strife but dynamism. Left to its own, devotion becomes sentimental and even fanatical, while knowledge becomes dry and pedantic. When the two are connected and integrated, knowledge—which after all arises from a love of truth—begins to feed and delight the heart, which in its turn warms and stimulates the energy for further exploration
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Richard Smoley (Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition)
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There is to be found today in the realm of the intuition much of wonder; this can be contacted. It is now the privilege of the race to contact that “raincloud of knowable things” to which the ancient seer Patanjali refers in his fourth book; the race, through its many aspirants, can today precipitate this “raincloud” so that the brains of men everywhere can register the contact. Hitherto this has been the privilege of the illumined and rare seer. In this way the New Age will be ushered in and the new knowledge will enter into the minds of humanity.
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Alice A. Bailey (Esoteric Psychology, Volume I (A Treatise on the Seven Rays Book 1))
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The Montauk Project bridges the modalities of science with the most esoteric techniques ever imagined and finally catapults us to the threshold of the stars. We all know something is out there, but we're not sure exactly what.
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James Morcan (Underground Bases (The Underground Knowledge Series, #7))
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... more than most forms of discourse, esoteric thought calls upon you to assimilate it, not on the basis of citations and credentials, but by its resonance with your own being.
The Gospel alludes to this issue when it says of Christ “that the people were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Matt. 7:28-29). The "scribes" are the spiritual pettifoggers of all eras, who insist on quibbling over chapter and verse. Christ was able to take them on, as many passages in the Gospels show, but his authority did not come from erudition or skill in debate. Rather, it came from a knowledge that went deeper than the letter of the law. This is what “astonished” the people. At the same time, there had to be some deeper knowing in the people themselves that could recognize this authority, that could hear in it the ring of truth. It is this intuitive knowing... which all of us possess, whether or not we pay any heed to it...
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Richard Smoley (Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition)
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Where the mystic desires union, the esotericist seeks knowledge—in other words, gnosis—and he reaches it through the imagination. Achieving gnosis through the use of disciplined spiritual imagination will become one of the fruits of the esoteric exodus out of Alexandria.
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Gary Lachman (The Secret Teachers of the Western World)
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admissions for those with esoteric academic preparation), (c) equality of the students (i.e., fair treatment and equal campus opportunities for “aggie” students), and (d) the diffusion of knowledge from higher education to the masses (i.e., the distribution of new knowledge and best practices from land-grant colleges and experiment stations via extension and outreach).35
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Nathan M. Sorber (Land-Grant Colleges and Popular Revolt: The Origins of the Morrill Act and the Reform of Higher Education)