The goal of any esoteric work must be that of objectivity, first in our understanding of ourselves, and then, as our filters and programmes 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.
Regular readers of this site will be aware that we focus on several issues that we think are the core to developing an objective picture of what is really going on in our world. The most important of these topics are:
1. Hyperdimensional realities: Our reality is embedded in a complex system of realities where we are not the ultimate of God's creations; we are not at the top of the food chain. Our reality is controlled by denizens of higher reality, and the forces at work in that reality are not all good. These are the wellspring of energy behind the evil shepherds referred to above. Gurdjieff refers to them in the story of the Evil Magician cited by Ouspensky in In Search of the Miraculous:
"There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.
"At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.
"And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.
"This tale is a very good illustration of man's position." [p. 226]
As an aside, it is also a very good illustration of the relationship of Maharaji's students vis a vis their "Master".
2. That all six billion people on the planet are not the same; there are fundamental differences that are genetic and esoteric. But these differences have nothing to do with those cited throughout history and used to justify the domination of one group over another: colour, culture, language, wealth or social status. The real differences, the fundamental differences upon which the secret history of the world is based, have to do with conscience. Whether we like to admit it or not, there are those who have no conscience, the psychopath, man's main predator, but a predator that looks exactly like its prey, the predators that move invisibly throughout society feeding off of the weak and ignorant. In the case of psychopaths, for too long we have all lived in ignorance because this oh, so clever predator has worked very hard to make sure that we are not even aware of his existence and his wiles and ways of attack.
The second difference is between that group of humans we call organic portals and those humans who have the possibility of creating a permanent link with their real 'I', their higher selves; human beings with an esoteric organ called "conscience". Furthermore, because the psychopaths have power and have established their own vision of the world as the standard, everyone else on the planet is to some extent or another infected and serves to propagate, justify, and perpetuate the pathological system, one which we have called the Pathocracy, after the work of Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology.
For a good introduction to these ideas, we invite the reader to look at the following topics on the Signs of the Times Forum, where these issues are discussed in depth.
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/forum/viewforum.php?id=10
http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=457
3. That our planet passes through periodic catastrophes, known in legends variously as the Great Deluge, the Flood of Noah, or the Fall of Atlantis. Our research indicates that we are entering such a period of catastrophe, one that may even make the legendary Fall of Atlantis pale in comparison. The recent find of a meteor crater under the ice in the Antarctic, a crater some 300 miles in diameter and now being given as the cause of the great extinction 250 million years ago, may be an indication of what we can expect.
Obviously, this is the most summary of outlines of the knowledge necessary to see the world as it really is. We present it to give the reader an idea of the complexity of our reality and the type of knowledge that any esoteric school or Tradition must include if it is to give a complete picture of our situation.
We have observed that so-called esoteric teachings that promote primarily ideas of Inner Peace, living in the Present, and "Heart Knowledge" (i.e. certitude of inner subjective feeling) do not deal with these issues. The significance of this should become apparent as we proceed. Suffice it to say for now that any teaching that goes no further than helping people find "strength to endure the suffering of life", without describing for them accurately and objectively the real conditions that are the basis of that life, and the real possibilities of interacting with life based on Truth will simply keep its followers in a constant state of readiness to feed man's natural predators, often willingly at that, in the misguided belief that such giving is the highest manifestation of Love. Such followers are little more than milk cows nourishing the predators of our world.