This is a continuation from the first part posted under the title of Gnosis.
Please read it first if you have not done already.
I very much hope that you find it helpfull.
To find it follow Esoterica>the Work>Gnosis
In considering the illogical claim by some Eastern civilizations that a man can have a number of wives, we can only say that this is only possible when the absolute freedom of the wives is dominated and restricted by the animal desire of man. The wives in this case, have no chance to express themselves according to their nature. There is also the ancient claim that a man or woman can only love one person at a time, but that their affections can cover a number of persons at the same time. We refer you to our talk "What is Love?" and you will see how these two talks blend with one another. We have concentrated upon the idea of the human relationships between two people for a definite reason; unless and until a man or a woman learns to fulfil their responsibility to another in whom they find their love nature manifesting, it is useless to try to grasp the far-reaching implications of this Philosophy of Naughting of the Self.
Thus in the last and final analysis this old Philosophy of Naughtness is in reality the Philosophy of Love in all its incredible beauty and freedom of expression. Just as human love seeks to bind two people together into one, and at the same time seeks to encourage the two parties to express themselves in full, one reacting upon the other for the good of both; if we now lift this vast conception to the higher regions of man's being, we come to the idea of God who follows the same pattern as the human. Bearing in mind always, the Divine Soul is ever the Divine Principle to the personality, in the same way in which the Divine Unknown Principle is to its manifestation. In this, the Divine Soul of Man is Naughtness, but becomes 'something' by man reasoning upon it, and separating the Soul into an objective concept which becomes divorced from the Whole.
We can see that attachment to the senses can cause the Essence of man to grow into shapes of peculiar nature around the human Soul. These can take on the likeness of particular animals, such as the wolf, ape, lion, goat, monkey, ass, snake, rat and many others. These cause the desires of the Soul to become like the special nature of these animals, for it imitates the actions of those whose characteristics it bears. This means that those so encumbered will intimately associate themselves with the impulses and impressions of irrational animals. The man who is pre-occupied with selfish sex-seeking will behave like a rat and desert the giver as soon as his need has been satisfied; the man who is preoccupied with the affairs of others will assume the characteristics of a snake which will twist and twine when discovered. The obvious source of these animal propensities is in the man's images of menace which were first created by the concepts of his mind and then allowed to take control of it.
It is not proper for a man to yield to his animal nature, nor to seek excuses for his misdeeds by saying that foreign elements attached to him have compelled him to sin; far from it, the choice is his, the responsibility is his, the human Soul's compulsion is brought about by the man's attachment to the world of the senses. It is the man himself who led his desire towards evil and refused to battle with the constraints of the appendages. It is obviously man's bounden duty as Man to show himself ruler over the inferior creation within him, thus gaining mastery by means of his Divine Soul which gains its existence from the Manifested God, which in turn owes its existence to the Naughtness of All.
If man builds into himself the characteristics of the irrational animal kingdom, then where do these aspects or concepts find themselves located and what are they? They are embodied in the "images of menace," whose life is derived from the subconscious mind of man which are to be found within the vital double of the physical body. This is the Hate-Man, the very opposite to the Love-Man. The Hate-Man is evolved from the images of menace wherever they are given the opportunity of evil thought or action, however slight, and the man who becomes a slave to these illusory creatures becomes the embodiment of Hate in contradistinction to the Love-Man, the man who strives to free himself from these artificially created images of menace.
These images of menace are the crystallized forms of man's concepts. If they are attached to himself they can, if left alone, remain illusions. However, if the man, by continually thinking upon them or upon the idea or ideas which originally brought them into being, gives them the necessary mental food, they will gain control over the mechanism of the human computer in the subconscious mind. When this stage has been reached, they will erupt in violence, usually in the first place against someone else whom they have convinced the man that he has a grievance against, but eventually turn against the man himself. All hell breaks lose until the man to whom the images are attached learns, obviously the hard way, that the only way to defeat these creatures is to stop perpetuating the mental concepts which first caused them to exist. When this is done, they will wither and die and be blown away like leaves in a windy autumn. Also, and this is very important because not often understood, they will have no life and will be unable to harm anyone. Only the man himself, if he is sufficiently foolish, can revivify them.
The Fabricating Deity, the crystallization of the Great Naught, as mirrored within the human Soul, fashions the human personality. Having no substance of its own, it uses the gross matter as its substance and out of this forms the human vestures, and thus are the eternal attributes of the Love-Man are duly imprisoned in the darkness or ignorance of the personality. These human Souls spend their lives in ignorance, surrounded by their mental concepts, passing from one body to another under the ward of the creative power of the World Fabricator. Thus, by this ignorance, men have allowed themselves to create their tormentors, the images of menace, which cause their creators to hate the Light, as embodied in religion and the Power of Mysticism.
This means that the images of menace within man's own nature force him to worship the world of form instead of being aware of the World of Light, and in this worship he becomes attached to the world of illusion and breaks the Law of Natura Herself within himself, hence automatically creating his own hellish tormentors. The only way for man to restore himself to freedom of spirit, soul and body is to renounce the importance of the reality of matter for itself and to treat matter and its manifold forms as an instrument independent to man himself. This means that Naughtness is perfection itself, being of the nature of That Which Is and which transcends the intellect, being free from all deficiency.
The Whole Man, having his roots in the THAT, should manifest that perfection within his personality. This is not, so, however, since man having been granted the power of freewill of choice, decided to endure the vast sea of ignorance. In his choice to depart from his perfected state, he descended through the regions of force-matter, becoming more ignorant with every turn of the spiral until he found himself in darkness, his inner senses dulled to his Real Nature. By this descent into matter he became subject to the Rulers of the Personality, who imprisoned man within the bodies and blinded his eyes to Reality, only to have him become aware of Illusion. This is the vast delusion of Souls for, since they have been breathed out from the That by means of emanation, until these Souls can free themselves from the Great Illusion their conception of God as the Great Naughtness becomes impossible.
In the mortal man the Great Deceiver is the sexual force and man's adoration of the erect phallus, and under the mistaken impression that this alone can dull his mind from the great Illusion of the Senses, he creates, through his ignorance, the images of menace which torment him mentally, emotionally and finally physically. The ignorance of sex and its true meaning lies at the root of most, if not all, of man's frustrations, resentments and suffering. Here we are speaking of the sexual-force which is the creative force within all his three vestures, and not of the physical sex alone. Man is governed by the unnatural sway of sexual pre-occupations and his refusal to accept the Decrees of Natura. The result of this is that when a man finds himself under a sexual compulsion, either physically, emotionally or mentally, he is thrown into a state of turmoil through fear of the possible loss of his animal gratification. In this state a man ceases to be a creator of the world but becomes instead its willing slave.
The man who is under the sway of the Great Deceiver becomes oblivious to his manhood and degenerates into a mere human-animal obsessed with sex of all forms and his apparent need for it. This creates the images of menace which blind him to his true manliness and the possibility of becoming a conqueror of the world of illusion. For such a man, while in this state, the Philosophy of Naughtness is impossible and he still remains a human-animal, with all the fears and appetites of an animal. The sexual impulse on all levels of consciousness is continually moving towards creation of new forms, new vistas of knowledge, new methods of human advancement, new civilizations and new species wherein the human Soul can gain the opportunity of greater expansion of its Naughtness.
It is the wanton and selfish misdirection of this wonderful force which forces man to become the abject slave of the transitory world. He hides his life in small and darkened corners for fear that his friends may find him out. As a consequence his life is spent in running from this and that friend, and this running causes him to adopt irrational beliefs which accentuate his loss and uselessness. In other words, he develops into a chronic neurotic, although he may think he is smart and feels that he can split himself into two, through his identification with the concepts in his mind such a separation intensifies his fear of being restricted or even dominated. In reality, it is this unreal and dangerous pre-occupation with sex for its own sake which creates the ugly neurosis and perpetuates the division between his Divine and human Soul.
Love Teaches Man the Way to the Naughtness
The man who is filled with the expanding Nature of Love ceases to be pre-occupied with himself. He directs his creative force into creative channels such as science, philosophy, art, music, poetry, or any other which may uplift mankind to a higher level of activity. This re-direction of his creative powers does not, however, preclude him from having a normal and healthy sex-life, far from it, it is vital that he should, it enables him to reap the beneficent results of such a balanced sex-life. Such a balanced outlook, free from the tormenting images of menace, becomes the driving urge within man that makes him want to climb the ladder of fame and success. So long as a man retains his unhealthy compulsion that he must have sex, then he will fail, this unnatural compulsion will act as a barrier to the free expression of his creative force, but if he gains the love of another, then the lover will open him up to the rays of the Sun of Success.
Love, which is given freely and with deep sincerity, becomes the great binder and expander of man who will open up like a flower to the Sun of his Naughtness Self. All of his restricted programmed life will rush into a vast freedom of movement. His qualities, capacities and character will now be realised and released to the world and he will arise from his cave of selfishness and walk erect among his equals. His intelligence will be fired by the Flame of Love and he will stand out among men. Has this man lost anything? Definitely NO. The fact that he has freed himself from his sexual compulsions enables him to enjoy the boon to man - the ability to change himself into a more wonderful man, no longer a slave to sex, but its master.
Let this be clearly shown: we are referring to sex on all levels of man's being, and let us not overlook this important classification of the meaning of sex, whilst it is true that the physical act is performed in the body, the sexual act can also be performed in the emotional and mental vesture of man. According to the intelligence and wisdom of the man, so will this sex-force find its balance in all vestures, not one greater or lesser than the other. Hence the reason for our discussion of the danger of man's sexual compulsions, which compulsions bind him as a slave to the physical world of space, time and duration.
Therefore, this Philosophy of Naughtness deals with a Space-Time-Continuum, a mental state where there is no division between the movement of energy, no form of separateness to act as a cubby-hole wherein a man can build his selfish nest of self-centeredness, which shuts him off from the ever-expanding and growing Natura of God. Briefly speaking, Naughtness means that when man has come to the realization that he must lose his self-individuality and become one with the social-individuality, the importance of what he wants, what he needs and what he knows is no longer of any value. He now knows that they are his working tools, and not himself.
Let us finish here, to continue this outline would cover many hundreds of volumes, in fact the whole of man’s natural history, since the Naught is the All, and we have only touched on a small fragment of that All.
III
The Law of Permutation
This part of this series was first given in 1962. Even at that time very few of the members were able to fully grasp the subtle implications of this Doctrine, mainly because of their pre-conceived ideas and conceptional sensory-intellectual knowledge. Now it is hoped that with the publication of parts 1 and 2, you will understand more of the ancient Doctrine of Mysticism or the Arcanum.
Within the Gnostic Mysteries, commonly called “The Mysteries of Jesus,” and the secret Assemblies of Europe, the neophyte underwent a series of initiations which granted to the candidate a definite expansion of consciousness and enabled him to step out of the normal line of evolution to tread the shorter and steeper path, which is a more difficult path, to become a God-like Man.
The last initiation to be taken within the Secret Fraternities was always called the last and most awful of all the Mysteries, when the man so blessed allowed his Immortal Spirit to descend into the human tabernacle and dwell therein. This descent of the Immortal Spirit into man takes place in accordance with definite laws and if a man obeys these laws they will guide the aspirant to spiritual advancement towards the goal of Ultimate Perfection.
This is the first time that this Doctrine of The Law of Permutation has been permitted to be revealed to the ordinary man without first taking the ancient Sodalian Oath. We have not given the vital keys to this doctrine for a very good reason.
William Kingsland has touched upon this doctrine when he states: “Thus the Root Teaching of this Wisdom at all times has been the DIVINE NATURE OF MAN; and what was taught in the inner schools of the Mysteries – a teaching which can still be obtained – was the method of achieving this supreme knowledge in a practical manner, that is to say the attainment of God-like characters and powers. Every man is potentially a god, AT ROOT HE IS GOD … Knowledge is Power. The supreme knowledge confers upon its possessor the possibility which is not even dreamed of by the ordinary individual – or the ordinary Christian for that matter (and also the modern seeker of the Truth,) not withstanding the repeated assertion of that possibility in the Christian Writ.”
Remember that this system is not new, it has also been called Raja Yoga by the Hindus, the Hidden Path in Buddhism, the Way of the Cross in Christianity, the Philosopher’s Stone of the Rosicrucians, and the Great Work of the Alchemists. It is also the Holy Grail of the Arthurian Legend, the Lost Word of Freemasonry, and many more. This Path is ever the same although the names have been changed from century to century, but the purpose is ever the same, it is the process to attain the Dynamic Soul-Powers which are locked up within your human nature waiting to be brought forth to make you a MASTER AMONG MEN.
The process and method of fulfilment of the Law of Permutation as given in the Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma is neither Christian, Theosophical, Rosicrucian, Masonic or Spiritualistic, but is fundamentally the Divine Wisdom as was embodied in the CHRISTIAN GNOSIS of the first three centuries A.D. Our teachings are based upon a scientific synthesis of the basic principles of the above systems whereby the modern man can attain the supreme knowledge which will make him a God Incarnate.
Further, the teachings as given in the Pleroma are not based upon the teachings of a man or a group of men, either from the past or in the present, but they are the direct teachings of the Immortal Spirit of Richard, Duc de Palatine, who is our human counter-part and is simply the “transmitter” of the knowledge and instructions given to you. Therefore, we wish to take this opportunity of advising our Group Leaders that their teachings should at all times be drawn from their own Divine Immortal Soul and not from the incomplete opinions of men. Again we stress this important fact, every word which issues from the lips of Our transmitter can only be considered as an opinion until you have by your own efforts, proved them for yourselves. By following this golden rule you will avoid being caught up in analytical intellectualism, and on the other hand superstition and dogma of all forms.
The expression “Ye are Gods”, which, to our biblical and modern students is a mere abstraction, is for the Gnostic of vital significance and more so for the student of the Pleromic Life. We have until now refrained from hinting of this doctrine of the Law of Permutation as we have felt that it is too high a doctrine to give outside the protection of the Secret Assemblies.
The comprehension of this vital doctrine lies in the understanding and experience of the Unity of God and Man and without this understanding we are afraid that what we are about to give will just pass over your heads. Although we have given the outlines of this doctrine throughout the Monographs, few students have been able to grasp its full significance. Come what may, we have been ordered to give it. Let us hope!
The Law of Permutation has implied that Jeshu and Paul, like certain other god-like men, had reached the highest of all stages on earth – the perfect union of the Immortal Spirit with the human Soul. The Trinity within man was complete and the man became a god incarnate. This means that we have here the true meaning of the term “Mediator.”
In fact, if the student really understands our purpose, the Pleroma teaches this doctrine.
There are two stages to be passed through in order to attain this complete union, first, one must attain Illumination or Ecstasy, which means that the human Soul must become unified with its Divine Twin – the Divine Soul. “The path by which to Deity we climb is arduous, rough, ineffable, sublime.” So the Path to Illumination is one of conquest, when the Divine Soul conquers the Dragon of the lower self. We must emphasise this very strongly, that the attainment of the Illumination is not a matter of escape, of getting into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yet the attraction which most occult systems offer has been that it is so easy; a mere matter of an intellectual acceptance of certain occult dogmas, such as karma, reincarnation, meditation and vegetarianism, etc., etc. These are all dogmas and have no foundation from the lips of these god-like men of old. This does not mean to say that the above are not useful, they are very useful when they are understood in the correct manner. There are so many conflicting opinions concerning them that the student does not know which system to accept.
To attain Illumination you must be fully human in every way, you must blend the Divine and Moral Law into one whilst still in the body of flesh. The reason why you were forced to take up this body of flesh is to gain mastery over it and draw forth its inherent powers and capabilities, until you keep you consciousness focussed in the body you will not gain the Victory. This business of dwelling upon the “something” which is beyond the body, is one of the main stumbling blocks which act as a barrier to the student, this means that his or her whole attention is directed away from the INNER SELF.
There is no redemption outside the confines of this mortal body of yours, hence the purpose of reincarnation and karma. In most occult systems the student is taught that he must crucify the body and its powers in order to attain Samadhi or the Kingdom of God. Now, there is no real evidence for this claim, methinks that it received its beginnings from certain Theosophical writers who should have known better. As far as we can tell, all of the great Teachers of humanity demanded that we should live a perfectly normal and healthy human life, but at the same time we should endeavour to use the Gnosis as a means of directing our energies in the right direction.
Illumination is attained either by the absorption of the human Soul into the Divine, or the merging of the Divine with the human. The former is most common, the latter very rare indeed, perhaps one or two mortals in each century have the strength and determination to achieve this blessed state of consciousness.
Let us try to explain this process. The method of absorption demands a pure body, emotions and mind, the three aspects must be cleared of all the dross which has accumulated over the hundreds of incarnations you have had, admittedly Karma takes care of a great portion of this dross, but, the method of Karma is a slow and intermittent process. There are theories prevailing that one can neutralise one’s Karma by good works. Now, this is absolutely impossible, it is not the action which is taken into account with the individual, it is the motive which originally prompted it which matters, the motive is the essence or force which must be dealt with.
Then we have the theory that a person will return to earth and pay off all the Karma generated in the previous life, this again does not stand up to logic. It would be impossible to meet the Karma from the previous life in the immediate life, this would then defeat the whole purpose, it would mean that you would have no chance to enjoy the good forces you have generated in the past lives. Nature does not work in this manner, sometimes a set of Karmic forces are held back for many lives, waiting for a favourable life wherein this Essence can be worked out, at the same time Nature also gives compensating opportunities which are worked out in conjunction with the evil forces.
So, it means that when a person desires to force his evolution, much of the evil forces are released to him in this present life, therefore, he has to cope with them and transmute them into spiritual energies which will enable him to clear out the dross quickly, this prepares the Shining Cord which links him to the Divine Self, meaning that the clearer and more expanded the channel is, the easier it is for the human Soul to escape into the Divine. This must not be considered as an escape in the ordinary sense as he must return to the body to complete his labours. The individual now enjoys the faculty of being lifted up into his Real Self for a short period of time, he then becomes Illumined.
Now we come to the process whereby the Soul consciousness is able to descend fully into the human Soul. He must first have fulfilled the above process, once he has done this he must work to entice the Soul to descend into the body, for this to take place, considerably more of his Karma is brought forth, he must clear his mind completely of all knowledge, the mind must become a clear concave mirror. The subconscious mind must also be harnessed and controlled by the spiritual will. If this becomes possible, then the two Souls can act as ONE, the subconscious mind is blanketed completely and the Soul then is able to speak forth the Divine Wisdom direct.
For this to happen to you, you must not allow your thoughts to flow forth to a guru, guide or master. If you do this, then you are diverting your vital energies into an illusion. It means in effect, that you have handed over your self-reliance to something outside of yourself, and even if the Divine Soul does speak to you, you will reject it and it will retire back into its own state for this incarnation. The Master can only give you advice and encouragement, but he cannot, nor is he permitted to, stand between you and your God within.
Then we come to the next stage, and normally a man reaches this stage rarely, perhaps twelve people in 2,155 years. This stage is reached when you permit the Immortal Spirit to conquer both the Divine and human Souls whilst you are still in the mortal body. The New Testament is replete with hints and suggestions given by such god-like men as Jeshu and Paul.
In order to explain this next stage, you will have to bear with us. It is not possible for the mortal man to directly behold his Spirit; he can only do this through his Divine Soul. “He who hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” We mentioned the Shining Cord previously, now this Cord or Ray descends down from the father and reaches into the human Soul, it looks like a funnel of shining light and along this ray are three centres of energy, or balls of dazzling Light, these are the spirit, soul and human soul, each one shares in the life and consciousness which is continually flowing from the Father – the Immortal Spirit of Man.
We must remember that as God manifests as a Trinity of Modes or Aspects, so the whole man is also a Trinity. Now this trinity of spirit, soul and body is also divided into three vestures or sheaths. This means that the Spirit functions in a complete vesture of three aspects, the Soul also functions in a complete vesture of three aspects and so does the human Soul. This ray from the Father links the Spirit with itself, and the Spirit is linked with the Divine Soul by this ray, and it again links the Soul with its human counterpart.
Logically, if from your standpoint, this is correct, then there is only the Life of God pervading the universe, and man and all creatures are ensouled by this Life. In fact, if it were not for this emanating Life of God, the whole of the universe could not exist in its present form. This means that you are as a human consciousness actually God encased in matter, but even the energy which gives matter life is the Life of God.
So God causes seven emanations to proceed from Himself through the Holy Spirit. In other words, God breathes into space seven times and on each out-flow of His breath, He forms one of the seven regions of matter until we have the following regions or types of matter – divine, spiritual, monadic; these form the vesture of the Immortal Spirit of man. On the next three breaths He forms the second aspect of the Monadic, the Christ level and the higher mental form and on the third breath He forms the lower mental, the emotional and finally the vital and its physical counterpart.
The Jewish Kabalah shows this process as the ten Sephiroths or Emanations, as Kether (Father), Chokmah (Son), and Binah (Holy Ghost), these are the Trinity which remain within the Deity, then we have Chesed (Divine), Geburah (Spiritual), and Tiphereth (Monadic) they form the Immortal Spirit. Then come Netzech (Christos), Jesed (Mental) and Hod (Emotions), and finally, there comes Mulkuth (Physical or body), in one system.
This shows that each Sephira or Emanation produces by emanation another Sephira, each one a little more dense material than the former. You will see again that the Life which ensouls each Sephira or Region is the same as the Life of God, so we repeat again, that the Spirit, Soul and Body of man are actually the Three Aspects of God permeating the whole of manifestation, in other words, you could say that manifestation is the result of the Divine Thought.
So you have the Divine Plan simply as this: The Spirit embodies the Will of God, the Divine Soul is the Son of God and the human Soul is the Holy Ghost or Activity of God, apparently three aspects, but in reality they are ONE. So, as Jeshu says, “If I be lifted up, I will lift all men up unto me.” So when we lift up our human Soul to become one with the Christ-Soul we become one in Christ, and when the Christ-Soul is lifted up into the Immortal Spirit, we become one in and with God. When this stage has been reached then you have a Mediator of the fulfilment of the Law of Permutation.
Now this process must not be confused with “reincarnation”, this only refers to the descent and ascent of the human Soul into matter, permutation is a variation of the order of the series, meaning, of course, that when the incarnation is ready, there is a variation or addition to the Soul, that of the Immortal Spirit, this means that you will become god-like men and women, you will become a God-incarnate.
You may consider us very pretentious when we say that Richard is now finalising the last stages of this process, remember, he will refute this assertion, it is we, his Divine Soul, who makes this claim on his behalf. You may say, this may be, but what proof have we to substantiate this claim? There is ample evidence scattered through our writings through him, but even though we may affirm this, it still remains an opinion to you and the onus rests with you to prove or disprove this statement.
This is pure Pantheism and this has been objected to by Christians and occultists who still retain a measure of their early religious beliefs, it may be regarded as reprehensible to the majority, but this doctrine was held by the Gnostics and the ancient Mysteries. We ask this question: How can a true philosopher or occultist regard the Deity as infinite, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent and eternal unless Nature is but the lowest aspect of It, and It informs every atom in Nature? Think on this and you will realise why we state that the majority of systems are half-baked and based upon the shell of Theo-Sophia and not upon the kernel.
Such a doctrine would be rejected by Spiritualists and the modern and distorted versions of Freemasonry and the Rose Cross, but it was held by Jeshu and Paul and afterwards by the Gnostics and Secret Fraternities. How can these bodies honestly lay claim to be the successors of the Gnostics and the Mysteries when they reject the very foundations of the Gnostics? It does not make sense when we bring to bear pure logic upon this subject.
Theism, on the other hand, maintains the God and man are two distinct creations, man can never become God and God never man, that man can become the image of the Father and no more. From this illogical stand we have Theopathy, when the individual believes that he must suffer for his god, or that he must suffer because his ‘master’ or ‘guru’ or even ‘guide’ directs him to do so, this becomes sheer religious and occult fanaticism. With this blasphemy you have Theodicy when these people grant the ‘divine right’ to either their god or master to afflict the innocent, and damn those predestined, and still remain a loving or just god or master, both theologically and occultly – A Mystery.
The state of man being both God and Man was known as Theothropism, and by the Hindus as Avatar in a minor stage who was born from a woman, and the other who is parentless such as Krishna was a Vishnu. This vital doctrine states that it is the descent of the Immortal Spirit into the body of a simple mortal. Meaning of course, that one must become as a little child before one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet Heaven is already within you here and now, all you have to do is to realise it. Yet, it sounds simple when we know it intellectually, but when we experience it, it becomes another matter.
This doctrine supplies the key to the nature and enigma of the great Souls, such as Jeshu whom the Gnostics claimed did not and could not suffer physically for mankind but suffered spiritually for the whole of the human race. Hence the reasons why they were called The Docetae or Illusionists. They claim that all Souls lived under a vast delusion because they were breathed out of the Spirit into matter, they were imprisoned in the darkness of the flesh and spent their lives passing from one to another of the bodies which are under the ward of the Creative Power. It is only by the descent of the Saviour or Immortal Spirit that the human Soul can ascend back to its original home in the Spirit.
Such souls as Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus and H P Blavatsky allowed their Divine Spirits to overshadow them. In the case of the Princes of Light or the Masters, They have become fully merged with their Immortal Spirits in so far as to be able to complete Their human evolution. They have been called the ‘Demi-Gods’ in as far as They are conscious of the Godhead, but not fully one with IT. They have become free of the human conditions in order to become their master. Even though They have attained liberation from the world of illusion, They have only completed the first major stage in Their divine evolution as Immortal Spirits. This infers that a Master is not infallible as most students are led to believe.
It is extraordinary, those who have purported to know the facts concerning the Masters of the Wisdom did not comprehend this vital doctrine. Perhaps the reason for this omission lies in the fact that when the knowledge of these Exalted Beings was first publicly revealed to the world through H P Blavatsky, that century was one of smugness and intellectualism. The writings of C W Leadbeater and Annie Besant are replete with incorrect statements, it would appear that what they were not permitted to see or they refused to recognise, they imagined, thus their self-create thought-forms were accepted by them as being the Truth of what they saw.
It is due to the fact that the later Theosophical writers ignored this vital doctrine of Permutation, that their writings have been sterile and misleading. More’s the pity, that most so-called ‘new’ systems are simply a rehash of the fundamental doctrines of Theosophy. They have accepted the shells of Theo-Sophia and rejected the nut itself. This may be due to the fact that their ‘inspired’ and self-appointed ‘teachers’ have read the writings of the psuedo-Theosophist and have ignored the real Theosophist – Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – and those who went before her.
This doctrine is reflected in the writings of Job and we find in chapter two, verse nine, these startling words: “And I am a wanderer, changing place after place and house after house.” This does not refer to reincarnation – but actually refers to the Immortal Spirit, and to the descent of the Spirit, and it is by means of this Spirit that souls are set free from the circle of metempsychosis, when the Divine Soul is germinated and unfolded due to their experience gained in the mortal forms and then only when their sins (Karma) have been remitted by personal effort, thus allowing the Immortal Alone-begotten Son to descend into the regions of the Soul-tragedy to effect their deliverance.
Now we must correct a very grave misunderstanding which has been allowed to gain credence. The word ‘soul’ has been used to refer to the EGO of man and in other places to the astral consciousness of man, this has been due to spiritual ignorance and lack of logic. There are two souls in man, a divine and a human soul. When we say ‘two’ souls we do not mean that there are two separate and distinct Souls in man contending for man, they are actually two aspects of the Ego of Man, they have been called the “Twins” in mythology or the “Lovers” in classical and medieval writings. Many of our Fairy Tales show the same theme.
These two Souls have been called Christ and Jesus in Christianity, and it was at the Baptism that the Christos entered into Jesus to dwell therein, at the same time the Voice (Immortal Spirit) spoke to Jesus, the Christed One, as being the Beloved Son of the Father-Spirit. This union is again shown at the Transfiguration, when the Spirit illumined Jesus, the other two showing themselves as the Divine and human Souls of the Whole Man. We can see that up to the time of baptism, Jesus remained simply as an advanced human Soul, after the baptism he becomes the Illumined One wherein the Divine and Human dwelt in one form, but after the Transfiguration, when the Spirit descended into the mortal form, the Man showed himself as a God-Man.
It was at the Crucifixion that the Spirit and Soul left the mortal form on the cross of matter, hence the agonising cry from the cross and why the Gnostics claimed that Christ could not suffer physically. It was Jesus the mortal Soul who suffered in order to complete his human evolution. This would account for the various wonders which occurred at the supposed death of Jesus and the phenomena which occurred after his Resurrection and his final ascent into the Spirit. “I go unto my god, your god; my father and your father.” There is nothing in this statement warranting the Christian claim that Christ alone was the Son of God. What Christ really meant was that all men are potentially gods, but in a latent state of Being. They were sleeping in the tomb of flesh and it is the work of the Christos-Soul to awaken the ‘dead’ at the last trump, meaning, of course, in the light of the above, when the human Soul has gained the last victory over the Ruler of the Body.
Thus He says: “Except a man be born of water (soul) and of the spirit (fire) he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven; that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” This can only be explained by the Gnosis and is explained by the gnosis in this wise: He (soul) was himself in the Jordan (the stream of the Deity), and after this purification in the waters of life he became clothed with a spiritual body, a copy or reflection of his virgin-made physical body; so that when the god of the body condemned his own physical body to death, i.e. meaning the four-fold constitution of the cross of the personality, the Soul body, nourished by the virgin body, the Soul vesture, he might strip off the physical body, and nail it to the ‘tree’, and then put on his new spiritual body of perfection instead of another body of flesh.
In the above you have the full meaning of the Buddhist doctrine of the “Incarnations of the Buddha” in the Dalai Lama and Techu Lama. It also explains the vague statement of Jesus when he says: “And if you will receive it, this is Elias that was for to come; he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Ye do likewise.” Elias here refers to the Immortal Spirit of the prophet and not to his Immortal Soul.
After each incarnation, the Soul dissolves its personality and has to assume and form a new body when it next incarnates and so on. This is reincarnation. The idea of the personality is withdrawn into the Soul after each incarnation to be blended into the Soul Vesture. When a man reaches union with the soul, the Soul is able to crystallise any of these Ideas and project them into its present personality and the human consciousness will assume the characteristics of this idea and relate all the inherent qualities through the present body.
For instance, if a Soul incarnated as Valentinius of the 2nd Century, the whole of this life would be withdrawn or stored in the Soul memory as a complete ‘ideation’ of that life. The Soul now returns to incarnation some 1700 years later and, if required, could cause its present personality to assume all the characteristics of Valentinius and a clairvoyant would see the vital vesture change and be remoulded into the likeness of the former for a short period of time. Here we have another misunderstanding of H P Blavatsky, Olcott was under the impression that it was a ‘master’ who used the mortal body of HPB, whilst writing “Isis Unveiled” and “The Secret Doctrine”, this was due to his pre-conceived ideas and interest in phenomena. In actual fact, it was her Soul projecting the crystallised ‘ideas’ into the present form of HPB.
If our students of the Pleroma are astute enough they will notice that there are certain subtle changes in the style of writing in our literature and in the manner of our lecturing, these variations or permutations are due to our ability to project and crystallise some of our ideas (the essence of previous lives) into the human consciousness of Richard. Now when we come to the overshadowing or descent of the Immortal Spirit, the same process occurs. Instead of the Ideations of the Soul, we have the Ideations of the Spirit manifesting in the mortal body, the memory of the Deity flows forth into the outer world by means of this enlarged link made between the Spirit and the human Soul of Man.
So he who would become a Mediator, a god on earth, must have reached a stage in his human evolution which allows the Immortal Spirit to shed Its radiance upon the human being as a God – Microcosmos of the Macrocosmos, he becomes consciously part and parcel of the Unknown God, of which the Immortal Spirit is a direct emanation. This means in effect that the man possesses all the attributes of his Parent Source, and is granted omnipotence and omniscience. The human man is endowed with these faculties, but yet unable to manifest them while in the mortal body. Normally during the incarnation they are obscured in most men, they are veiled and limited by the capabilities of the physical nature.
To understand this question, the following must be clearly known: since the Spirit, Soul and human Soul are actually one and the same Life of God, they posses all the powers of the Deity here and now, although these powers are stultified by the conditions of the body, but once a man honestly desires to become the Image of his Father and begins to prepare the personality for this descent or awakening of these powers, they begin to function, slowly at first, but as more and more effort is expended on self-labour, these powers begin to show themselves, first as all kinds of internal and external phenomena, then the emotional vesture becomes more and more susceptible to the influences of this region and finally the mind becomes fired with new mental energy. It must be clearly understood that all these forms of phenomena are just the outward and visible signs of an inner and invisible awakening.
Most students seem to be caught up in this phenomena and are under the impression that unless they experience some form of it they are making no progress. This means that they become glamourised by this phenomena and will refuse to take the next logical step. But once realising that phenomena is but the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible progress, they begin to ignore it and leave all forms of phenomena strictly alone. They soon come to realise that these are really illusory and serve no real purpose, then they direct the whole of their energies towards the Inner Self and seek to become one with it and draw it down into the human consciousness.
Even when you have effected this union between the Divine and human Souls, the labour must continue and you must seek union with the Spirit and the blended divine and human Souls and drown, as it were, the powers of the Immortal Spirit in the body.
So the man who becomes divinely-inhabited may tower far above his brothers, evince a god-like wisdom, whilst the rest of the brothers around him are but overshadowed by their Divine Self. However, in spite of the fact that the Divine Self cannot make itself fully known, every chance is given to them to become immortal hereafter, with no other security than their personal efforts to win the Kingdom of Heaven, but the man so chosen has already become an immortal being while yet still in the body.
The man so blessed secures dominion over all the works of creation by employing the Power of NAME. There is an old belief that each perfection of man is the incarnation of the Supreme Soul and forever the Invisible God. The average man is a latent incarnation of the Supreme Soul, but it is only after completing the requirements of the ARCANE DISCIPLINE that man will become a conscious incarnation of the Supreme. Many of the God-Men were and are complete men, gods on earth, for their gods or spirits have descended into their hallowed tabernacles, the purified physical bodies.
Now, perhaps you will see the reason why we are constantly stressing the moral and practical aspects of this teaching instead of concentrating upon the actual knowledge of the things that are. The acquirement of knowledge is absolutely useless unless it is accompanied by true morality, knowledge grants you the working theory of the Path to Attainment, but the moral teachings act as a means of achieving the Path. When we stress to you the various pitfalls which lie in wait for the student we have a very definite reason for this. Richard has already travelled this path to US, and he was guilty of the very things he writes about and thus held himself back from attainment, but now that he has attained the first stage, he can see where he failed and he is determined that those who are entrusted to his care will not fall into sin as he did.
Whether you accept the fact that you may be guilty of these sins lies with you, most people will refuse to accept the possibility that they are guilty of sinning of falling short of the glory of the Real Self, and when they read his strictures, they take offence and retire from him. Believe us when we say, Richard will not lose any sleep if you do retire from the Pleroma. He knows that when one drops out another will take his place, this must always be the case. Most people resent being told the truth about themselves, they cannot face the possibility that they may be wrong and he right, their pride stands in the way.
It boils down to this fact; Richard has attained what you desire to attain, he has learnt the lessons which you are learning now, he has realised his Divinity and you are hoping to realise this. Surely logic should make you realise that if Richard has attained, then you can do likewise, but if you will only accept that which you want to know and reject that which you should know, then do not blame him for your failures. Most people will only accept a set of ideas if they fall in with their pre-conceived notions, in spite of the fact that these notions have been proven wrong. In this case a man becomes his own worst enemy and holds himself back from realising the truth of Himself.
Human nature was the same in the past as it is now, the pseudo-leaders and teachers of most occult groups are so confident of their knowledge over their followers, the believers must be content with the blind acceptance of the claims of these leaders, whereas, there are one or two societies which actually have for their leader one of these god-like men and those who come into contact with such men, find them quite the reverse of their pre-conceived ideas of what a god-man could be. You will find such men living very simply and they give no indication of their godship, they are devoid of any pretence and pretentious claims as to their natural powers and knowledge. Outwardly, they give no indication of their inner powers, it is only when they will permit a trusted person to see behind the façade that you will realise who and what they are, in fact, it may be possible that one of your close friends is such a one. They live a normal life, in the midst of the world. We know of three such men and it was only when they began to trust Richard did they reveal themselves as men of great spirituality.
We often wonder why so many people have failed to grasp the deeper implications of the Pleroma, perhaps what they offer is considered to be beyond the normal individual or too high for them. You may be staggered by the vastness of the system presented to you, you may either consider it to be a new-fangled system created to ensnare you into joining, or perhaps it may be another ‘carrot’ to lure you on again.
We caused to be issued a pamphlet entitled “Has Life Conquered You?” even some of our members took an objection to this, methinks they objected without bothering to understand its real meaning. Perhaps we had better explain the reason for this apparent mirage. We are all here in the world of flesh, which we call ‘life’, in fact it is the life of the animal world, and we all know that the material world can conquer us completely and if we fall for it, it will create a hell upon earth for us. It is the Divine Soul which is the only Thing which can rescue us from the gloom of this world, which the ancients and Gnostics called DEATH.
Therefore, it is very unwise to judge a thing or person by the world of appearances, one must stop and think about it very carefully and not attribute to a perfectly correct thing improper motives. This, maybe, is one of the reasons why so many people have failed to grasp the wonderful conception which the Pleroma presents to them. Yet they will allow themselves to fall for such blatant carrot-snares as this one: “What great powers do these men possess?” it infers that if you join the order, these powers will be given to you. You could fall for this one, many have, but if you realise that these powers are already within you here and now, waiting to be brought into manifestation, you will see that the above is a barefaced lie. There are so many of these barefaced lies being accepted as being true, it is not to be wondered at that people have lost the art of pure reason.
As a well-known American novelist wrote: “…our national trait is to believe everything that’s dished out to us and then, when the gilt paint wears off the gold brick, to blame everyone except ourselves … the only way you can keep from swallowing the stuff that is handed out today, couched in the semblance of irrefutable logic, is to read the fallacies of yesterday, couched in the same irrefutable logic … and no one stops to ask questions; they simply start dancing along behind the Pied Piper.” (Erle Stanley Gardner) This complaint is worldwide.
Every student who enters into spiritual endeavour desires to attain the Goal of Life, but they lack the required development of the faculty of discrimination to sort out the real from the false and as a consequence miss many wonderful opportunities which are placed in their way. The Pleroma is the only public body propounding the vital secrets of the Gnosis and the Esoteric Doctrine of the Ages in a form which can be applied by the modern seeker. The whole of history stands as a living witness to the veracity of our teachings, so many of the God-like Men have reiterated this self-same system of attainment and by their lives stand witness to posterity to the correctness of this system.
In order to avoid the confusion of formulating a new nomenclature for the purposes of propounding this ancient teaching, we have used the Christian Gnosis. We have chosen this medium simply because most Western seekers have at some time or other been members of one of the Christian Churches, so, naturally, they are familiar with the nomenclature as given. We also know from history that the Christian religion is derived from the GNOSIS and that in turn owes its existence to the Sacred Mysteries of the ancient world, and even beyond these.
By using the Gnosis one will see that the New Testament is actually the story of man and his efforts to become ONE with his Divine Soul, as we have endeavoured to show. The New Testament, as the life and history of a man in time cannot be accepted owing to the many contradictions and allusions to the main doctrines which are to be found in the older religions. Gnosticism is simply a Western form of Raja Yoga of India, most of the Sayings and Doings of Jesus have their prototype in the lives of Christna and Buddha, many of his sayings are to be found in Pythagoras and Plato, the mystical teachings of Jesus are to be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. So the Gnosis is a blending of all the main doctrines of the former, yet presented in a new form and from this system emerged Christianity. St. Augustine says: “What is nowadays called the Christian religion was in existence among the ancient people, and has continually existed from the very origin of the human race, until Christ Himself having appeared, they began to designate as ‘Christian’ the true religion which had hitherto been in existence.”
The pandering to the desire of the Western mind for something ‘new’ has been the means of spreading confusion and conflict amongst seekers but if these seekers who are ever seeking something new would use their logical mind, they would soon discover that they have received nothing new in essence. What they have received are human conceptions born out of a very fertile imagination. Admittedly they work for a while and then stop, the seekers that gather up their skirts and go-a-wandering again until they find yet another ‘bargain’ in the same manner as the housewife who is always on the lookout for new contraptions to make her work easier. In the main, however, the new knick-knacks are simply a variation of the old.
One has only to read the ‘brochures’ which are sent out with an analytical eye, and one will see that they make promises to you but they, the writers, have not fulfilled what they claim. This alone should make you think. But do people really think for themselves? Surely what they accept as ‘thinking’ is a feeling. To feel that a thing is right cannot be accepted as Truth but when you know a thing you experience it, otherwise by feeling a thing is right you are not sure and this feeling lays you wide open to be taken for a ride.
The Pleroma has received full authority and this is proven by its consistent adherence to the Arcane Discipline and the Gnosis. Try, however, to tell people this simple fact and they will not believe you, more so when they find that you are teaching a very simple and straightforward doctrine and system. O what fools these mortals be! Now, if you think we are referring to you, you have a chip on your shoulder.
Now, there is another thing which stops people from acknowledging the truth when it is presented to them. They are so accustomed to being told that if they join such and such a society they will ‘receive’ something or that they will progress quickly, now this is a complete deception being put upon them. Take for instance, when you plant a small tree in the ground, you do not see it grow, but all the time it is continually growing, so it is with yourself. To think that you can see progress in yourself is another of the illusions of this world and yet you fall for this mirage. The more you bring your logic to bear on these things, you will see how much you have allowed yourselves to become glamourised by the ever-changing scenes and conditions of this world of yours.
Finally, we have been allowed to give you one of the most vital of all esoteric doctrines and we doubt if but a handful will really grasp the magnitude of the vista presented to you. Many of you may allow your pre-conceived notions to cause you to deny this fact, others may consider it far to high a teaching for them and still others may say that it is too simple to be true. TRUTH IS ALWAYS SIMPLE. It is you who have clothed it in mystique, you who have surrounded it with taboos. There are also those people, still glamourised by their religious training, who consider it a blasphemy to place oneself on the same footing as God.
The fact that we follow the ARCANE DISCIPLINE which has never changed in substance or procedure from century to century, should above all arrest your attention and cause you to make your own investigations into this society called the Pleroma. Did not Jesus say: “I have come to give you nothing new?” Surely this becomes clear, there is nothing new under the sun and each teacher, if he or she has the authority, can only reiterate the Ageless Divine Wisdom.
Think on these things and if you have the inner perception to see that the Pleroma is the right path, then you will either continue and if you have come newly to it, you will join it. If, on the other hand, you lack the required development, then you will pass this by and consider it just “another one of those doubtful societies” one meets up with every day of their life.
Jeshu of previous fame, being as he was a god-man walking the earth, one who had fulfilled the LAW OF PERMUTATION says, concerning the Gnosis or Arcane Discipline: “Till heaven and earth pass, one iota shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled.” The Law must be fulfilled in the whole of Man becoming a GOD-MAN on earth.
IV
To understand this Philosophy of Naughting one must of necessity stop thinking in mental concepts, those pictures which the mind creates when one thinks of a thing, we must cause the senses to remain still and passive. By this means the reason is also silenced, then in the stillness of the self-image, the Voice of the Soul-Self can impress the brain cells with its Power.
We must also understand that it is our self who conditions the boundaries of our objective mind by clothing our thoughts with mental force-matter in the dimensional time-sequence of the mental vesture. We all allow ourselves to be conditioned by our constant programming of our human computer or “self-image” as it is known in Psycho-Cybernetics. In Mystical Experience this self-image is shown as the inverted reflection of the Abstract Self within molecular matter.
In the new Psychological understanding of the human personality, this “self-image” is the key to the human personality and behaviour. Change this self-image and we change the whole of the personality – which includes the physical form, the emotional nature and the mental outlook – for it is this image which sets the limits of human achievement. If we ponder over this scientific premise, we will immediately see that the formation of this self-image is due to our action of mentally programming our human computer with mental concepts, and according to the nature of our mental outlook, so we set the boundaries of our knowledge and experience.
Thus, when we speak of the innate “Success Mechanism” as propounded by Cybernetics, we are referring to the Divine Soul of the Mystic. In both sciences, it is the Creative Mechanism within our very nature which operates this Success Mechanism and spurs us on to achievement of life. This Success Mechanism is impersonal and abstract in nature, it cannot be registered by the senses or understood by the reason. This Inner Drive will work automatically to achieve the goals of success and happiness, so long as we learn to work with this mechanism and refuse to clog up the mind with conceptional images which are derived from our imperfect senses which gives a faulty reason, or bring unhappiness and failure if we do not.
As we have stated before: with the ability to control the three-fold faculties of the self-image comes the crushing realisation that, except within the fleeting light-waves which flit through the grey cells of the brain, the past is nothing, the present is non-important and the future does not exist. In this realisation of our personal self-image we become aware that the past limits our awareness of the present, the present has no real permanent existence for us except by what is reflected by the past, or by the nature of the deposits with which we have programmed our human computer or self-image, and we realise that the future is still an illusion and unborn in time and space and that above all, it is of no importance to the present.
In the United States the science of psychology has taken a very definite and most startling turn for the better. The previous interpretation of this science as being simply the “Science of Behaviour” has become outmoded with the discovery of the “self-image” which is the blueprint or mind picture of ourselves. It has now been scientifically proven that when we change this image and act upon it just as if it were true, we permit the Success Mechanism from the Soul to change our lives. In Mysticism, of the Philosophy of Naughting, this same premise is held and is identical to that now taught by Cybernetics except that the Science of Mysticism is not merely to be read about, but it is to be experienced in our daily life as a fact in the present.
It will now be seen that the acquiring of knowledge or sensual information in the manner of the intellectual is in itself passive, whereas the way of the Mystic and Adept is by experiencing the truth from within which is the active way of success. This now reveals the real and only reason why the members of the Pleroma and the Disciplina Arcani have failed to achieve Illumination of the self-image of the personality. It is only when the written word is treated as a means to understand the way in which the image can be lightened with the Light of the Soul, and not as the way itself, that a person can achieve the above. All through the Monographs of the Pleroma, some 108 lessons, this instruction has been clearly given, perhaps not in the same picture-language as given in this Philosophy, but nevertheless it is essentially the same teaching.
The science of Psycho-Cybernetics became possible through the work of the physicists and mathematicians, as they rightly claim that any new step in human knowledge applicable to any science is more likely to come from outside of the science in question. “Pasteur was not a medical doctor. The Wright Brothers were not aeronautical engineers but bicycle mechanics. Einstein, properly speaking, was not a physicist but a mathematician. Yet
Please read it first if you have not done already.
I very much hope that you find it helpfull.
To find it follow Esoterica>the Work>Gnosis
In considering the illogical claim by some Eastern civilizations that a man can have a number of wives, we can only say that this is only possible when the absolute freedom of the wives is dominated and restricted by the animal desire of man. The wives in this case, have no chance to express themselves according to their nature. There is also the ancient claim that a man or woman can only love one person at a time, but that their affections can cover a number of persons at the same time. We refer you to our talk "What is Love?" and you will see how these two talks blend with one another. We have concentrated upon the idea of the human relationships between two people for a definite reason; unless and until a man or a woman learns to fulfil their responsibility to another in whom they find their love nature manifesting, it is useless to try to grasp the far-reaching implications of this Philosophy of Naughting of the Self.
Thus in the last and final analysis this old Philosophy of Naughtness is in reality the Philosophy of Love in all its incredible beauty and freedom of expression. Just as human love seeks to bind two people together into one, and at the same time seeks to encourage the two parties to express themselves in full, one reacting upon the other for the good of both; if we now lift this vast conception to the higher regions of man's being, we come to the idea of God who follows the same pattern as the human. Bearing in mind always, the Divine Soul is ever the Divine Principle to the personality, in the same way in which the Divine Unknown Principle is to its manifestation. In this, the Divine Soul of Man is Naughtness, but becomes 'something' by man reasoning upon it, and separating the Soul into an objective concept which becomes divorced from the Whole.
We can see that attachment to the senses can cause the Essence of man to grow into shapes of peculiar nature around the human Soul. These can take on the likeness of particular animals, such as the wolf, ape, lion, goat, monkey, ass, snake, rat and many others. These cause the desires of the Soul to become like the special nature of these animals, for it imitates the actions of those whose characteristics it bears. This means that those so encumbered will intimately associate themselves with the impulses and impressions of irrational animals. The man who is pre-occupied with selfish sex-seeking will behave like a rat and desert the giver as soon as his need has been satisfied; the man who is preoccupied with the affairs of others will assume the characteristics of a snake which will twist and twine when discovered. The obvious source of these animal propensities is in the man's images of menace which were first created by the concepts of his mind and then allowed to take control of it.
It is not proper for a man to yield to his animal nature, nor to seek excuses for his misdeeds by saying that foreign elements attached to him have compelled him to sin; far from it, the choice is his, the responsibility is his, the human Soul's compulsion is brought about by the man's attachment to the world of the senses. It is the man himself who led his desire towards evil and refused to battle with the constraints of the appendages. It is obviously man's bounden duty as Man to show himself ruler over the inferior creation within him, thus gaining mastery by means of his Divine Soul which gains its existence from the Manifested God, which in turn owes its existence to the Naughtness of All.
If man builds into himself the characteristics of the irrational animal kingdom, then where do these aspects or concepts find themselves located and what are they? They are embodied in the "images of menace," whose life is derived from the subconscious mind of man which are to be found within the vital double of the physical body. This is the Hate-Man, the very opposite to the Love-Man. The Hate-Man is evolved from the images of menace wherever they are given the opportunity of evil thought or action, however slight, and the man who becomes a slave to these illusory creatures becomes the embodiment of Hate in contradistinction to the Love-Man, the man who strives to free himself from these artificially created images of menace.
These images of menace are the crystallized forms of man's concepts. If they are attached to himself they can, if left alone, remain illusions. However, if the man, by continually thinking upon them or upon the idea or ideas which originally brought them into being, gives them the necessary mental food, they will gain control over the mechanism of the human computer in the subconscious mind. When this stage has been reached, they will erupt in violence, usually in the first place against someone else whom they have convinced the man that he has a grievance against, but eventually turn against the man himself. All hell breaks lose until the man to whom the images are attached learns, obviously the hard way, that the only way to defeat these creatures is to stop perpetuating the mental concepts which first caused them to exist. When this is done, they will wither and die and be blown away like leaves in a windy autumn. Also, and this is very important because not often understood, they will have no life and will be unable to harm anyone. Only the man himself, if he is sufficiently foolish, can revivify them.
The Fabricating Deity, the crystallization of the Great Naught, as mirrored within the human Soul, fashions the human personality. Having no substance of its own, it uses the gross matter as its substance and out of this forms the human vestures, and thus are the eternal attributes of the Love-Man are duly imprisoned in the darkness or ignorance of the personality. These human Souls spend their lives in ignorance, surrounded by their mental concepts, passing from one body to another under the ward of the creative power of the World Fabricator. Thus, by this ignorance, men have allowed themselves to create their tormentors, the images of menace, which cause their creators to hate the Light, as embodied in religion and the Power of Mysticism.
This means that the images of menace within man's own nature force him to worship the world of form instead of being aware of the World of Light, and in this worship he becomes attached to the world of illusion and breaks the Law of Natura Herself within himself, hence automatically creating his own hellish tormentors. The only way for man to restore himself to freedom of spirit, soul and body is to renounce the importance of the reality of matter for itself and to treat matter and its manifold forms as an instrument independent to man himself. This means that Naughtness is perfection itself, being of the nature of That Which Is and which transcends the intellect, being free from all deficiency.
The Whole Man, having his roots in the THAT, should manifest that perfection within his personality. This is not, so, however, since man having been granted the power of freewill of choice, decided to endure the vast sea of ignorance. In his choice to depart from his perfected state, he descended through the regions of force-matter, becoming more ignorant with every turn of the spiral until he found himself in darkness, his inner senses dulled to his Real Nature. By this descent into matter he became subject to the Rulers of the Personality, who imprisoned man within the bodies and blinded his eyes to Reality, only to have him become aware of Illusion. This is the vast delusion of Souls for, since they have been breathed out from the That by means of emanation, until these Souls can free themselves from the Great Illusion their conception of God as the Great Naughtness becomes impossible.
In the mortal man the Great Deceiver is the sexual force and man's adoration of the erect phallus, and under the mistaken impression that this alone can dull his mind from the great Illusion of the Senses, he creates, through his ignorance, the images of menace which torment him mentally, emotionally and finally physically. The ignorance of sex and its true meaning lies at the root of most, if not all, of man's frustrations, resentments and suffering. Here we are speaking of the sexual-force which is the creative force within all his three vestures, and not of the physical sex alone. Man is governed by the unnatural sway of sexual pre-occupations and his refusal to accept the Decrees of Natura. The result of this is that when a man finds himself under a sexual compulsion, either physically, emotionally or mentally, he is thrown into a state of turmoil through fear of the possible loss of his animal gratification. In this state a man ceases to be a creator of the world but becomes instead its willing slave.
The man who is under the sway of the Great Deceiver becomes oblivious to his manhood and degenerates into a mere human-animal obsessed with sex of all forms and his apparent need for it. This creates the images of menace which blind him to his true manliness and the possibility of becoming a conqueror of the world of illusion. For such a man, while in this state, the Philosophy of Naughtness is impossible and he still remains a human-animal, with all the fears and appetites of an animal. The sexual impulse on all levels of consciousness is continually moving towards creation of new forms, new vistas of knowledge, new methods of human advancement, new civilizations and new species wherein the human Soul can gain the opportunity of greater expansion of its Naughtness.
It is the wanton and selfish misdirection of this wonderful force which forces man to become the abject slave of the transitory world. He hides his life in small and darkened corners for fear that his friends may find him out. As a consequence his life is spent in running from this and that friend, and this running causes him to adopt irrational beliefs which accentuate his loss and uselessness. In other words, he develops into a chronic neurotic, although he may think he is smart and feels that he can split himself into two, through his identification with the concepts in his mind such a separation intensifies his fear of being restricted or even dominated. In reality, it is this unreal and dangerous pre-occupation with sex for its own sake which creates the ugly neurosis and perpetuates the division between his Divine and human Soul.
Love Teaches Man the Way to the Naughtness
The man who is filled with the expanding Nature of Love ceases to be pre-occupied with himself. He directs his creative force into creative channels such as science, philosophy, art, music, poetry, or any other which may uplift mankind to a higher level of activity. This re-direction of his creative powers does not, however, preclude him from having a normal and healthy sex-life, far from it, it is vital that he should, it enables him to reap the beneficent results of such a balanced sex-life. Such a balanced outlook, free from the tormenting images of menace, becomes the driving urge within man that makes him want to climb the ladder of fame and success. So long as a man retains his unhealthy compulsion that he must have sex, then he will fail, this unnatural compulsion will act as a barrier to the free expression of his creative force, but if he gains the love of another, then the lover will open him up to the rays of the Sun of Success.
Love, which is given freely and with deep sincerity, becomes the great binder and expander of man who will open up like a flower to the Sun of his Naughtness Self. All of his restricted programmed life will rush into a vast freedom of movement. His qualities, capacities and character will now be realised and released to the world and he will arise from his cave of selfishness and walk erect among his equals. His intelligence will be fired by the Flame of Love and he will stand out among men. Has this man lost anything? Definitely NO. The fact that he has freed himself from his sexual compulsions enables him to enjoy the boon to man - the ability to change himself into a more wonderful man, no longer a slave to sex, but its master.
Let this be clearly shown: we are referring to sex on all levels of man's being, and let us not overlook this important classification of the meaning of sex, whilst it is true that the physical act is performed in the body, the sexual act can also be performed in the emotional and mental vesture of man. According to the intelligence and wisdom of the man, so will this sex-force find its balance in all vestures, not one greater or lesser than the other. Hence the reason for our discussion of the danger of man's sexual compulsions, which compulsions bind him as a slave to the physical world of space, time and duration.
Therefore, this Philosophy of Naughtness deals with a Space-Time-Continuum, a mental state where there is no division between the movement of energy, no form of separateness to act as a cubby-hole wherein a man can build his selfish nest of self-centeredness, which shuts him off from the ever-expanding and growing Natura of God. Briefly speaking, Naughtness means that when man has come to the realization that he must lose his self-individuality and become one with the social-individuality, the importance of what he wants, what he needs and what he knows is no longer of any value. He now knows that they are his working tools, and not himself.
Let us finish here, to continue this outline would cover many hundreds of volumes, in fact the whole of man’s natural history, since the Naught is the All, and we have only touched on a small fragment of that All.
III
The Law of Permutation
This part of this series was first given in 1962. Even at that time very few of the members were able to fully grasp the subtle implications of this Doctrine, mainly because of their pre-conceived ideas and conceptional sensory-intellectual knowledge. Now it is hoped that with the publication of parts 1 and 2, you will understand more of the ancient Doctrine of Mysticism or the Arcanum.
Within the Gnostic Mysteries, commonly called “The Mysteries of Jesus,” and the secret Assemblies of Europe, the neophyte underwent a series of initiations which granted to the candidate a definite expansion of consciousness and enabled him to step out of the normal line of evolution to tread the shorter and steeper path, which is a more difficult path, to become a God-like Man.
The last initiation to be taken within the Secret Fraternities was always called the last and most awful of all the Mysteries, when the man so blessed allowed his Immortal Spirit to descend into the human tabernacle and dwell therein. This descent of the Immortal Spirit into man takes place in accordance with definite laws and if a man obeys these laws they will guide the aspirant to spiritual advancement towards the goal of Ultimate Perfection.
This is the first time that this Doctrine of The Law of Permutation has been permitted to be revealed to the ordinary man without first taking the ancient Sodalian Oath. We have not given the vital keys to this doctrine for a very good reason.
William Kingsland has touched upon this doctrine when he states: “Thus the Root Teaching of this Wisdom at all times has been the DIVINE NATURE OF MAN; and what was taught in the inner schools of the Mysteries – a teaching which can still be obtained – was the method of achieving this supreme knowledge in a practical manner, that is to say the attainment of God-like characters and powers. Every man is potentially a god, AT ROOT HE IS GOD … Knowledge is Power. The supreme knowledge confers upon its possessor the possibility which is not even dreamed of by the ordinary individual – or the ordinary Christian for that matter (and also the modern seeker of the Truth,) not withstanding the repeated assertion of that possibility in the Christian Writ.”
Remember that this system is not new, it has also been called Raja Yoga by the Hindus, the Hidden Path in Buddhism, the Way of the Cross in Christianity, the Philosopher’s Stone of the Rosicrucians, and the Great Work of the Alchemists. It is also the Holy Grail of the Arthurian Legend, the Lost Word of Freemasonry, and many more. This Path is ever the same although the names have been changed from century to century, but the purpose is ever the same, it is the process to attain the Dynamic Soul-Powers which are locked up within your human nature waiting to be brought forth to make you a MASTER AMONG MEN.
The process and method of fulfilment of the Law of Permutation as given in the Brotherhood and Order of the Pleroma is neither Christian, Theosophical, Rosicrucian, Masonic or Spiritualistic, but is fundamentally the Divine Wisdom as was embodied in the CHRISTIAN GNOSIS of the first three centuries A.D. Our teachings are based upon a scientific synthesis of the basic principles of the above systems whereby the modern man can attain the supreme knowledge which will make him a God Incarnate.
Further, the teachings as given in the Pleroma are not based upon the teachings of a man or a group of men, either from the past or in the present, but they are the direct teachings of the Immortal Spirit of Richard, Duc de Palatine, who is our human counter-part and is simply the “transmitter” of the knowledge and instructions given to you. Therefore, we wish to take this opportunity of advising our Group Leaders that their teachings should at all times be drawn from their own Divine Immortal Soul and not from the incomplete opinions of men. Again we stress this important fact, every word which issues from the lips of Our transmitter can only be considered as an opinion until you have by your own efforts, proved them for yourselves. By following this golden rule you will avoid being caught up in analytical intellectualism, and on the other hand superstition and dogma of all forms.
The expression “Ye are Gods”, which, to our biblical and modern students is a mere abstraction, is for the Gnostic of vital significance and more so for the student of the Pleromic Life. We have until now refrained from hinting of this doctrine of the Law of Permutation as we have felt that it is too high a doctrine to give outside the protection of the Secret Assemblies.
The comprehension of this vital doctrine lies in the understanding and experience of the Unity of God and Man and without this understanding we are afraid that what we are about to give will just pass over your heads. Although we have given the outlines of this doctrine throughout the Monographs, few students have been able to grasp its full significance. Come what may, we have been ordered to give it. Let us hope!
The Law of Permutation has implied that Jeshu and Paul, like certain other god-like men, had reached the highest of all stages on earth – the perfect union of the Immortal Spirit with the human Soul. The Trinity within man was complete and the man became a god incarnate. This means that we have here the true meaning of the term “Mediator.”
In fact, if the student really understands our purpose, the Pleroma teaches this doctrine.
There are two stages to be passed through in order to attain this complete union, first, one must attain Illumination or Ecstasy, which means that the human Soul must become unified with its Divine Twin – the Divine Soul. “The path by which to Deity we climb is arduous, rough, ineffable, sublime.” So the Path to Illumination is one of conquest, when the Divine Soul conquers the Dragon of the lower self. We must emphasise this very strongly, that the attainment of the Illumination is not a matter of escape, of getting into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Yet the attraction which most occult systems offer has been that it is so easy; a mere matter of an intellectual acceptance of certain occult dogmas, such as karma, reincarnation, meditation and vegetarianism, etc., etc. These are all dogmas and have no foundation from the lips of these god-like men of old. This does not mean to say that the above are not useful, they are very useful when they are understood in the correct manner. There are so many conflicting opinions concerning them that the student does not know which system to accept.
To attain Illumination you must be fully human in every way, you must blend the Divine and Moral Law into one whilst still in the body of flesh. The reason why you were forced to take up this body of flesh is to gain mastery over it and draw forth its inherent powers and capabilities, until you keep you consciousness focussed in the body you will not gain the Victory. This business of dwelling upon the “something” which is beyond the body, is one of the main stumbling blocks which act as a barrier to the student, this means that his or her whole attention is directed away from the INNER SELF.
There is no redemption outside the confines of this mortal body of yours, hence the purpose of reincarnation and karma. In most occult systems the student is taught that he must crucify the body and its powers in order to attain Samadhi or the Kingdom of God. Now, there is no real evidence for this claim, methinks that it received its beginnings from certain Theosophical writers who should have known better. As far as we can tell, all of the great Teachers of humanity demanded that we should live a perfectly normal and healthy human life, but at the same time we should endeavour to use the Gnosis as a means of directing our energies in the right direction.
Illumination is attained either by the absorption of the human Soul into the Divine, or the merging of the Divine with the human. The former is most common, the latter very rare indeed, perhaps one or two mortals in each century have the strength and determination to achieve this blessed state of consciousness.
Let us try to explain this process. The method of absorption demands a pure body, emotions and mind, the three aspects must be cleared of all the dross which has accumulated over the hundreds of incarnations you have had, admittedly Karma takes care of a great portion of this dross, but, the method of Karma is a slow and intermittent process. There are theories prevailing that one can neutralise one’s Karma by good works. Now, this is absolutely impossible, it is not the action which is taken into account with the individual, it is the motive which originally prompted it which matters, the motive is the essence or force which must be dealt with.
Then we have the theory that a person will return to earth and pay off all the Karma generated in the previous life, this again does not stand up to logic. It would be impossible to meet the Karma from the previous life in the immediate life, this would then defeat the whole purpose, it would mean that you would have no chance to enjoy the good forces you have generated in the past lives. Nature does not work in this manner, sometimes a set of Karmic forces are held back for many lives, waiting for a favourable life wherein this Essence can be worked out, at the same time Nature also gives compensating opportunities which are worked out in conjunction with the evil forces.
So, it means that when a person desires to force his evolution, much of the evil forces are released to him in this present life, therefore, he has to cope with them and transmute them into spiritual energies which will enable him to clear out the dross quickly, this prepares the Shining Cord which links him to the Divine Self, meaning that the clearer and more expanded the channel is, the easier it is for the human Soul to escape into the Divine. This must not be considered as an escape in the ordinary sense as he must return to the body to complete his labours. The individual now enjoys the faculty of being lifted up into his Real Self for a short period of time, he then becomes Illumined.
Now we come to the process whereby the Soul consciousness is able to descend fully into the human Soul. He must first have fulfilled the above process, once he has done this he must work to entice the Soul to descend into the body, for this to take place, considerably more of his Karma is brought forth, he must clear his mind completely of all knowledge, the mind must become a clear concave mirror. The subconscious mind must also be harnessed and controlled by the spiritual will. If this becomes possible, then the two Souls can act as ONE, the subconscious mind is blanketed completely and the Soul then is able to speak forth the Divine Wisdom direct.
For this to happen to you, you must not allow your thoughts to flow forth to a guru, guide or master. If you do this, then you are diverting your vital energies into an illusion. It means in effect, that you have handed over your self-reliance to something outside of yourself, and even if the Divine Soul does speak to you, you will reject it and it will retire back into its own state for this incarnation. The Master can only give you advice and encouragement, but he cannot, nor is he permitted to, stand between you and your God within.
Then we come to the next stage, and normally a man reaches this stage rarely, perhaps twelve people in 2,155 years. This stage is reached when you permit the Immortal Spirit to conquer both the Divine and human Souls whilst you are still in the mortal body. The New Testament is replete with hints and suggestions given by such god-like men as Jeshu and Paul.
In order to explain this next stage, you will have to bear with us. It is not possible for the mortal man to directly behold his Spirit; he can only do this through his Divine Soul. “He who hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” We mentioned the Shining Cord previously, now this Cord or Ray descends down from the father and reaches into the human Soul, it looks like a funnel of shining light and along this ray are three centres of energy, or balls of dazzling Light, these are the spirit, soul and human soul, each one shares in the life and consciousness which is continually flowing from the Father – the Immortal Spirit of Man.
We must remember that as God manifests as a Trinity of Modes or Aspects, so the whole man is also a Trinity. Now this trinity of spirit, soul and body is also divided into three vestures or sheaths. This means that the Spirit functions in a complete vesture of three aspects, the Soul also functions in a complete vesture of three aspects and so does the human Soul. This ray from the Father links the Spirit with itself, and the Spirit is linked with the Divine Soul by this ray, and it again links the Soul with its human counterpart.
Logically, if from your standpoint, this is correct, then there is only the Life of God pervading the universe, and man and all creatures are ensouled by this Life. In fact, if it were not for this emanating Life of God, the whole of the universe could not exist in its present form. This means that you are as a human consciousness actually God encased in matter, but even the energy which gives matter life is the Life of God.
So God causes seven emanations to proceed from Himself through the Holy Spirit. In other words, God breathes into space seven times and on each out-flow of His breath, He forms one of the seven regions of matter until we have the following regions or types of matter – divine, spiritual, monadic; these form the vesture of the Immortal Spirit of man. On the next three breaths He forms the second aspect of the Monadic, the Christ level and the higher mental form and on the third breath He forms the lower mental, the emotional and finally the vital and its physical counterpart.
The Jewish Kabalah shows this process as the ten Sephiroths or Emanations, as Kether (Father), Chokmah (Son), and Binah (Holy Ghost), these are the Trinity which remain within the Deity, then we have Chesed (Divine), Geburah (Spiritual), and Tiphereth (Monadic) they form the Immortal Spirit. Then come Netzech (Christos), Jesed (Mental) and Hod (Emotions), and finally, there comes Mulkuth (Physical or body), in one system.
This shows that each Sephira or Emanation produces by emanation another Sephira, each one a little more dense material than the former. You will see again that the Life which ensouls each Sephira or Region is the same as the Life of God, so we repeat again, that the Spirit, Soul and Body of man are actually the Three Aspects of God permeating the whole of manifestation, in other words, you could say that manifestation is the result of the Divine Thought.
So you have the Divine Plan simply as this: The Spirit embodies the Will of God, the Divine Soul is the Son of God and the human Soul is the Holy Ghost or Activity of God, apparently three aspects, but in reality they are ONE. So, as Jeshu says, “If I be lifted up, I will lift all men up unto me.” So when we lift up our human Soul to become one with the Christ-Soul we become one in Christ, and when the Christ-Soul is lifted up into the Immortal Spirit, we become one in and with God. When this stage has been reached then you have a Mediator of the fulfilment of the Law of Permutation.
Now this process must not be confused with “reincarnation”, this only refers to the descent and ascent of the human Soul into matter, permutation is a variation of the order of the series, meaning, of course, that when the incarnation is ready, there is a variation or addition to the Soul, that of the Immortal Spirit, this means that you will become god-like men and women, you will become a God-incarnate.
You may consider us very pretentious when we say that Richard is now finalising the last stages of this process, remember, he will refute this assertion, it is we, his Divine Soul, who makes this claim on his behalf. You may say, this may be, but what proof have we to substantiate this claim? There is ample evidence scattered through our writings through him, but even though we may affirm this, it still remains an opinion to you and the onus rests with you to prove or disprove this statement.
This is pure Pantheism and this has been objected to by Christians and occultists who still retain a measure of their early religious beliefs, it may be regarded as reprehensible to the majority, but this doctrine was held by the Gnostics and the ancient Mysteries. We ask this question: How can a true philosopher or occultist regard the Deity as infinite, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent and eternal unless Nature is but the lowest aspect of It, and It informs every atom in Nature? Think on this and you will realise why we state that the majority of systems are half-baked and based upon the shell of Theo-Sophia and not upon the kernel.
Such a doctrine would be rejected by Spiritualists and the modern and distorted versions of Freemasonry and the Rose Cross, but it was held by Jeshu and Paul and afterwards by the Gnostics and Secret Fraternities. How can these bodies honestly lay claim to be the successors of the Gnostics and the Mysteries when they reject the very foundations of the Gnostics? It does not make sense when we bring to bear pure logic upon this subject.
Theism, on the other hand, maintains the God and man are two distinct creations, man can never become God and God never man, that man can become the image of the Father and no more. From this illogical stand we have Theopathy, when the individual believes that he must suffer for his god, or that he must suffer because his ‘master’ or ‘guru’ or even ‘guide’ directs him to do so, this becomes sheer religious and occult fanaticism. With this blasphemy you have Theodicy when these people grant the ‘divine right’ to either their god or master to afflict the innocent, and damn those predestined, and still remain a loving or just god or master, both theologically and occultly – A Mystery.
The state of man being both God and Man was known as Theothropism, and by the Hindus as Avatar in a minor stage who was born from a woman, and the other who is parentless such as Krishna was a Vishnu. This vital doctrine states that it is the descent of the Immortal Spirit into the body of a simple mortal. Meaning of course, that one must become as a little child before one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet Heaven is already within you here and now, all you have to do is to realise it. Yet, it sounds simple when we know it intellectually, but when we experience it, it becomes another matter.
This doctrine supplies the key to the nature and enigma of the great Souls, such as Jeshu whom the Gnostics claimed did not and could not suffer physically for mankind but suffered spiritually for the whole of the human race. Hence the reasons why they were called The Docetae or Illusionists. They claim that all Souls lived under a vast delusion because they were breathed out of the Spirit into matter, they were imprisoned in the darkness of the flesh and spent their lives passing from one to another of the bodies which are under the ward of the Creative Power. It is only by the descent of the Saviour or Immortal Spirit that the human Soul can ascend back to its original home in the Spirit.
Such souls as Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus and H P Blavatsky allowed their Divine Spirits to overshadow them. In the case of the Princes of Light or the Masters, They have become fully merged with their Immortal Spirits in so far as to be able to complete Their human evolution. They have been called the ‘Demi-Gods’ in as far as They are conscious of the Godhead, but not fully one with IT. They have become free of the human conditions in order to become their master. Even though They have attained liberation from the world of illusion, They have only completed the first major stage in Their divine evolution as Immortal Spirits. This infers that a Master is not infallible as most students are led to believe.
It is extraordinary, those who have purported to know the facts concerning the Masters of the Wisdom did not comprehend this vital doctrine. Perhaps the reason for this omission lies in the fact that when the knowledge of these Exalted Beings was first publicly revealed to the world through H P Blavatsky, that century was one of smugness and intellectualism. The writings of C W Leadbeater and Annie Besant are replete with incorrect statements, it would appear that what they were not permitted to see or they refused to recognise, they imagined, thus their self-create thought-forms were accepted by them as being the Truth of what they saw.
It is due to the fact that the later Theosophical writers ignored this vital doctrine of Permutation, that their writings have been sterile and misleading. More’s the pity, that most so-called ‘new’ systems are simply a rehash of the fundamental doctrines of Theosophy. They have accepted the shells of Theo-Sophia and rejected the nut itself. This may be due to the fact that their ‘inspired’ and self-appointed ‘teachers’ have read the writings of the psuedo-Theosophist and have ignored the real Theosophist – Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – and those who went before her.
This doctrine is reflected in the writings of Job and we find in chapter two, verse nine, these startling words: “And I am a wanderer, changing place after place and house after house.” This does not refer to reincarnation – but actually refers to the Immortal Spirit, and to the descent of the Spirit, and it is by means of this Spirit that souls are set free from the circle of metempsychosis, when the Divine Soul is germinated and unfolded due to their experience gained in the mortal forms and then only when their sins (Karma) have been remitted by personal effort, thus allowing the Immortal Alone-begotten Son to descend into the regions of the Soul-tragedy to effect their deliverance.
Now we must correct a very grave misunderstanding which has been allowed to gain credence. The word ‘soul’ has been used to refer to the EGO of man and in other places to the astral consciousness of man, this has been due to spiritual ignorance and lack of logic. There are two souls in man, a divine and a human soul. When we say ‘two’ souls we do not mean that there are two separate and distinct Souls in man contending for man, they are actually two aspects of the Ego of Man, they have been called the “Twins” in mythology or the “Lovers” in classical and medieval writings. Many of our Fairy Tales show the same theme.
These two Souls have been called Christ and Jesus in Christianity, and it was at the Baptism that the Christos entered into Jesus to dwell therein, at the same time the Voice (Immortal Spirit) spoke to Jesus, the Christed One, as being the Beloved Son of the Father-Spirit. This union is again shown at the Transfiguration, when the Spirit illumined Jesus, the other two showing themselves as the Divine and human Souls of the Whole Man. We can see that up to the time of baptism, Jesus remained simply as an advanced human Soul, after the baptism he becomes the Illumined One wherein the Divine and Human dwelt in one form, but after the Transfiguration, when the Spirit descended into the mortal form, the Man showed himself as a God-Man.
It was at the Crucifixion that the Spirit and Soul left the mortal form on the cross of matter, hence the agonising cry from the cross and why the Gnostics claimed that Christ could not suffer physically. It was Jesus the mortal Soul who suffered in order to complete his human evolution. This would account for the various wonders which occurred at the supposed death of Jesus and the phenomena which occurred after his Resurrection and his final ascent into the Spirit. “I go unto my god, your god; my father and your father.” There is nothing in this statement warranting the Christian claim that Christ alone was the Son of God. What Christ really meant was that all men are potentially gods, but in a latent state of Being. They were sleeping in the tomb of flesh and it is the work of the Christos-Soul to awaken the ‘dead’ at the last trump, meaning, of course, in the light of the above, when the human Soul has gained the last victory over the Ruler of the Body.
Thus He says: “Except a man be born of water (soul) and of the spirit (fire) he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven; that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” This can only be explained by the Gnosis and is explained by the gnosis in this wise: He (soul) was himself in the Jordan (the stream of the Deity), and after this purification in the waters of life he became clothed with a spiritual body, a copy or reflection of his virgin-made physical body; so that when the god of the body condemned his own physical body to death, i.e. meaning the four-fold constitution of the cross of the personality, the Soul body, nourished by the virgin body, the Soul vesture, he might strip off the physical body, and nail it to the ‘tree’, and then put on his new spiritual body of perfection instead of another body of flesh.
In the above you have the full meaning of the Buddhist doctrine of the “Incarnations of the Buddha” in the Dalai Lama and Techu Lama. It also explains the vague statement of Jesus when he says: “And if you will receive it, this is Elias that was for to come; he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Ye do likewise.” Elias here refers to the Immortal Spirit of the prophet and not to his Immortal Soul.
After each incarnation, the Soul dissolves its personality and has to assume and form a new body when it next incarnates and so on. This is reincarnation. The idea of the personality is withdrawn into the Soul after each incarnation to be blended into the Soul Vesture. When a man reaches union with the soul, the Soul is able to crystallise any of these Ideas and project them into its present personality and the human consciousness will assume the characteristics of this idea and relate all the inherent qualities through the present body.
For instance, if a Soul incarnated as Valentinius of the 2nd Century, the whole of this life would be withdrawn or stored in the Soul memory as a complete ‘ideation’ of that life. The Soul now returns to incarnation some 1700 years later and, if required, could cause its present personality to assume all the characteristics of Valentinius and a clairvoyant would see the vital vesture change and be remoulded into the likeness of the former for a short period of time. Here we have another misunderstanding of H P Blavatsky, Olcott was under the impression that it was a ‘master’ who used the mortal body of HPB, whilst writing “Isis Unveiled” and “The Secret Doctrine”, this was due to his pre-conceived ideas and interest in phenomena. In actual fact, it was her Soul projecting the crystallised ‘ideas’ into the present form of HPB.
If our students of the Pleroma are astute enough they will notice that there are certain subtle changes in the style of writing in our literature and in the manner of our lecturing, these variations or permutations are due to our ability to project and crystallise some of our ideas (the essence of previous lives) into the human consciousness of Richard. Now when we come to the overshadowing or descent of the Immortal Spirit, the same process occurs. Instead of the Ideations of the Soul, we have the Ideations of the Spirit manifesting in the mortal body, the memory of the Deity flows forth into the outer world by means of this enlarged link made between the Spirit and the human Soul of Man.
So he who would become a Mediator, a god on earth, must have reached a stage in his human evolution which allows the Immortal Spirit to shed Its radiance upon the human being as a God – Microcosmos of the Macrocosmos, he becomes consciously part and parcel of the Unknown God, of which the Immortal Spirit is a direct emanation. This means in effect that the man possesses all the attributes of his Parent Source, and is granted omnipotence and omniscience. The human man is endowed with these faculties, but yet unable to manifest them while in the mortal body. Normally during the incarnation they are obscured in most men, they are veiled and limited by the capabilities of the physical nature.
To understand this question, the following must be clearly known: since the Spirit, Soul and human Soul are actually one and the same Life of God, they posses all the powers of the Deity here and now, although these powers are stultified by the conditions of the body, but once a man honestly desires to become the Image of his Father and begins to prepare the personality for this descent or awakening of these powers, they begin to function, slowly at first, but as more and more effort is expended on self-labour, these powers begin to show themselves, first as all kinds of internal and external phenomena, then the emotional vesture becomes more and more susceptible to the influences of this region and finally the mind becomes fired with new mental energy. It must be clearly understood that all these forms of phenomena are just the outward and visible signs of an inner and invisible awakening.
Most students seem to be caught up in this phenomena and are under the impression that unless they experience some form of it they are making no progress. This means that they become glamourised by this phenomena and will refuse to take the next logical step. But once realising that phenomena is but the outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible progress, they begin to ignore it and leave all forms of phenomena strictly alone. They soon come to realise that these are really illusory and serve no real purpose, then they direct the whole of their energies towards the Inner Self and seek to become one with it and draw it down into the human consciousness.
Even when you have effected this union between the Divine and human Souls, the labour must continue and you must seek union with the Spirit and the blended divine and human Souls and drown, as it were, the powers of the Immortal Spirit in the body.
So the man who becomes divinely-inhabited may tower far above his brothers, evince a god-like wisdom, whilst the rest of the brothers around him are but overshadowed by their Divine Self. However, in spite of the fact that the Divine Self cannot make itself fully known, every chance is given to them to become immortal hereafter, with no other security than their personal efforts to win the Kingdom of Heaven, but the man so chosen has already become an immortal being while yet still in the body.
The man so blessed secures dominion over all the works of creation by employing the Power of NAME. There is an old belief that each perfection of man is the incarnation of the Supreme Soul and forever the Invisible God. The average man is a latent incarnation of the Supreme Soul, but it is only after completing the requirements of the ARCANE DISCIPLINE that man will become a conscious incarnation of the Supreme. Many of the God-Men were and are complete men, gods on earth, for their gods or spirits have descended into their hallowed tabernacles, the purified physical bodies.
Now, perhaps you will see the reason why we are constantly stressing the moral and practical aspects of this teaching instead of concentrating upon the actual knowledge of the things that are. The acquirement of knowledge is absolutely useless unless it is accompanied by true morality, knowledge grants you the working theory of the Path to Attainment, but the moral teachings act as a means of achieving the Path. When we stress to you the various pitfalls which lie in wait for the student we have a very definite reason for this. Richard has already travelled this path to US, and he was guilty of the very things he writes about and thus held himself back from attainment, but now that he has attained the first stage, he can see where he failed and he is determined that those who are entrusted to his care will not fall into sin as he did.
Whether you accept the fact that you may be guilty of these sins lies with you, most people will refuse to accept the possibility that they are guilty of sinning of falling short of the glory of the Real Self, and when they read his strictures, they take offence and retire from him. Believe us when we say, Richard will not lose any sleep if you do retire from the Pleroma. He knows that when one drops out another will take his place, this must always be the case. Most people resent being told the truth about themselves, they cannot face the possibility that they may be wrong and he right, their pride stands in the way.
It boils down to this fact; Richard has attained what you desire to attain, he has learnt the lessons which you are learning now, he has realised his Divinity and you are hoping to realise this. Surely logic should make you realise that if Richard has attained, then you can do likewise, but if you will only accept that which you want to know and reject that which you should know, then do not blame him for your failures. Most people will only accept a set of ideas if they fall in with their pre-conceived notions, in spite of the fact that these notions have been proven wrong. In this case a man becomes his own worst enemy and holds himself back from realising the truth of Himself.
Human nature was the same in the past as it is now, the pseudo-leaders and teachers of most occult groups are so confident of their knowledge over their followers, the believers must be content with the blind acceptance of the claims of these leaders, whereas, there are one or two societies which actually have for their leader one of these god-like men and those who come into contact with such men, find them quite the reverse of their pre-conceived ideas of what a god-man could be. You will find such men living very simply and they give no indication of their godship, they are devoid of any pretence and pretentious claims as to their natural powers and knowledge. Outwardly, they give no indication of their inner powers, it is only when they will permit a trusted person to see behind the façade that you will realise who and what they are, in fact, it may be possible that one of your close friends is such a one. They live a normal life, in the midst of the world. We know of three such men and it was only when they began to trust Richard did they reveal themselves as men of great spirituality.
We often wonder why so many people have failed to grasp the deeper implications of the Pleroma, perhaps what they offer is considered to be beyond the normal individual or too high for them. You may be staggered by the vastness of the system presented to you, you may either consider it to be a new-fangled system created to ensnare you into joining, or perhaps it may be another ‘carrot’ to lure you on again.
We caused to be issued a pamphlet entitled “Has Life Conquered You?” even some of our members took an objection to this, methinks they objected without bothering to understand its real meaning. Perhaps we had better explain the reason for this apparent mirage. We are all here in the world of flesh, which we call ‘life’, in fact it is the life of the animal world, and we all know that the material world can conquer us completely and if we fall for it, it will create a hell upon earth for us. It is the Divine Soul which is the only Thing which can rescue us from the gloom of this world, which the ancients and Gnostics called DEATH.
Therefore, it is very unwise to judge a thing or person by the world of appearances, one must stop and think about it very carefully and not attribute to a perfectly correct thing improper motives. This, maybe, is one of the reasons why so many people have failed to grasp the wonderful conception which the Pleroma presents to them. Yet they will allow themselves to fall for such blatant carrot-snares as this one: “What great powers do these men possess?” it infers that if you join the order, these powers will be given to you. You could fall for this one, many have, but if you realise that these powers are already within you here and now, waiting to be brought into manifestation, you will see that the above is a barefaced lie. There are so many of these barefaced lies being accepted as being true, it is not to be wondered at that people have lost the art of pure reason.
As a well-known American novelist wrote: “…our national trait is to believe everything that’s dished out to us and then, when the gilt paint wears off the gold brick, to blame everyone except ourselves … the only way you can keep from swallowing the stuff that is handed out today, couched in the semblance of irrefutable logic, is to read the fallacies of yesterday, couched in the same irrefutable logic … and no one stops to ask questions; they simply start dancing along behind the Pied Piper.” (Erle Stanley Gardner) This complaint is worldwide.
Every student who enters into spiritual endeavour desires to attain the Goal of Life, but they lack the required development of the faculty of discrimination to sort out the real from the false and as a consequence miss many wonderful opportunities which are placed in their way. The Pleroma is the only public body propounding the vital secrets of the Gnosis and the Esoteric Doctrine of the Ages in a form which can be applied by the modern seeker. The whole of history stands as a living witness to the veracity of our teachings, so many of the God-like Men have reiterated this self-same system of attainment and by their lives stand witness to posterity to the correctness of this system.
In order to avoid the confusion of formulating a new nomenclature for the purposes of propounding this ancient teaching, we have used the Christian Gnosis. We have chosen this medium simply because most Western seekers have at some time or other been members of one of the Christian Churches, so, naturally, they are familiar with the nomenclature as given. We also know from history that the Christian religion is derived from the GNOSIS and that in turn owes its existence to the Sacred Mysteries of the ancient world, and even beyond these.
By using the Gnosis one will see that the New Testament is actually the story of man and his efforts to become ONE with his Divine Soul, as we have endeavoured to show. The New Testament, as the life and history of a man in time cannot be accepted owing to the many contradictions and allusions to the main doctrines which are to be found in the older religions. Gnosticism is simply a Western form of Raja Yoga of India, most of the Sayings and Doings of Jesus have their prototype in the lives of Christna and Buddha, many of his sayings are to be found in Pythagoras and Plato, the mystical teachings of Jesus are to be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. So the Gnosis is a blending of all the main doctrines of the former, yet presented in a new form and from this system emerged Christianity. St. Augustine says: “What is nowadays called the Christian religion was in existence among the ancient people, and has continually existed from the very origin of the human race, until Christ Himself having appeared, they began to designate as ‘Christian’ the true religion which had hitherto been in existence.”
The pandering to the desire of the Western mind for something ‘new’ has been the means of spreading confusion and conflict amongst seekers but if these seekers who are ever seeking something new would use their logical mind, they would soon discover that they have received nothing new in essence. What they have received are human conceptions born out of a very fertile imagination. Admittedly they work for a while and then stop, the seekers that gather up their skirts and go-a-wandering again until they find yet another ‘bargain’ in the same manner as the housewife who is always on the lookout for new contraptions to make her work easier. In the main, however, the new knick-knacks are simply a variation of the old.
One has only to read the ‘brochures’ which are sent out with an analytical eye, and one will see that they make promises to you but they, the writers, have not fulfilled what they claim. This alone should make you think. But do people really think for themselves? Surely what they accept as ‘thinking’ is a feeling. To feel that a thing is right cannot be accepted as Truth but when you know a thing you experience it, otherwise by feeling a thing is right you are not sure and this feeling lays you wide open to be taken for a ride.
The Pleroma has received full authority and this is proven by its consistent adherence to the Arcane Discipline and the Gnosis. Try, however, to tell people this simple fact and they will not believe you, more so when they find that you are teaching a very simple and straightforward doctrine and system. O what fools these mortals be! Now, if you think we are referring to you, you have a chip on your shoulder.
Now, there is another thing which stops people from acknowledging the truth when it is presented to them. They are so accustomed to being told that if they join such and such a society they will ‘receive’ something or that they will progress quickly, now this is a complete deception being put upon them. Take for instance, when you plant a small tree in the ground, you do not see it grow, but all the time it is continually growing, so it is with yourself. To think that you can see progress in yourself is another of the illusions of this world and yet you fall for this mirage. The more you bring your logic to bear on these things, you will see how much you have allowed yourselves to become glamourised by the ever-changing scenes and conditions of this world of yours.
Finally, we have been allowed to give you one of the most vital of all esoteric doctrines and we doubt if but a handful will really grasp the magnitude of the vista presented to you. Many of you may allow your pre-conceived notions to cause you to deny this fact, others may consider it far to high a teaching for them and still others may say that it is too simple to be true. TRUTH IS ALWAYS SIMPLE. It is you who have clothed it in mystique, you who have surrounded it with taboos. There are also those people, still glamourised by their religious training, who consider it a blasphemy to place oneself on the same footing as God.
The fact that we follow the ARCANE DISCIPLINE which has never changed in substance or procedure from century to century, should above all arrest your attention and cause you to make your own investigations into this society called the Pleroma. Did not Jesus say: “I have come to give you nothing new?” Surely this becomes clear, there is nothing new under the sun and each teacher, if he or she has the authority, can only reiterate the Ageless Divine Wisdom.
Think on these things and if you have the inner perception to see that the Pleroma is the right path, then you will either continue and if you have come newly to it, you will join it. If, on the other hand, you lack the required development, then you will pass this by and consider it just “another one of those doubtful societies” one meets up with every day of their life.
Jeshu of previous fame, being as he was a god-man walking the earth, one who had fulfilled the LAW OF PERMUTATION says, concerning the Gnosis or Arcane Discipline: “Till heaven and earth pass, one iota shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled.” The Law must be fulfilled in the whole of Man becoming a GOD-MAN on earth.
IV
To understand this Philosophy of Naughting one must of necessity stop thinking in mental concepts, those pictures which the mind creates when one thinks of a thing, we must cause the senses to remain still and passive. By this means the reason is also silenced, then in the stillness of the self-image, the Voice of the Soul-Self can impress the brain cells with its Power.
We must also understand that it is our self who conditions the boundaries of our objective mind by clothing our thoughts with mental force-matter in the dimensional time-sequence of the mental vesture. We all allow ourselves to be conditioned by our constant programming of our human computer or “self-image” as it is known in Psycho-Cybernetics. In Mystical Experience this self-image is shown as the inverted reflection of the Abstract Self within molecular matter.
In the new Psychological understanding of the human personality, this “self-image” is the key to the human personality and behaviour. Change this self-image and we change the whole of the personality – which includes the physical form, the emotional nature and the mental outlook – for it is this image which sets the limits of human achievement. If we ponder over this scientific premise, we will immediately see that the formation of this self-image is due to our action of mentally programming our human computer with mental concepts, and according to the nature of our mental outlook, so we set the boundaries of our knowledge and experience.
Thus, when we speak of the innate “Success Mechanism” as propounded by Cybernetics, we are referring to the Divine Soul of the Mystic. In both sciences, it is the Creative Mechanism within our very nature which operates this Success Mechanism and spurs us on to achievement of life. This Success Mechanism is impersonal and abstract in nature, it cannot be registered by the senses or understood by the reason. This Inner Drive will work automatically to achieve the goals of success and happiness, so long as we learn to work with this mechanism and refuse to clog up the mind with conceptional images which are derived from our imperfect senses which gives a faulty reason, or bring unhappiness and failure if we do not.
As we have stated before: with the ability to control the three-fold faculties of the self-image comes the crushing realisation that, except within the fleeting light-waves which flit through the grey cells of the brain, the past is nothing, the present is non-important and the future does not exist. In this realisation of our personal self-image we become aware that the past limits our awareness of the present, the present has no real permanent existence for us except by what is reflected by the past, or by the nature of the deposits with which we have programmed our human computer or self-image, and we realise that the future is still an illusion and unborn in time and space and that above all, it is of no importance to the present.
In the United States the science of psychology has taken a very definite and most startling turn for the better. The previous interpretation of this science as being simply the “Science of Behaviour” has become outmoded with the discovery of the “self-image” which is the blueprint or mind picture of ourselves. It has now been scientifically proven that when we change this image and act upon it just as if it were true, we permit the Success Mechanism from the Soul to change our lives. In Mysticism, of the Philosophy of Naughting, this same premise is held and is identical to that now taught by Cybernetics except that the Science of Mysticism is not merely to be read about, but it is to be experienced in our daily life as a fact in the present.
It will now be seen that the acquiring of knowledge or sensual information in the manner of the intellectual is in itself passive, whereas the way of the Mystic and Adept is by experiencing the truth from within which is the active way of success. This now reveals the real and only reason why the members of the Pleroma and the Disciplina Arcani have failed to achieve Illumination of the self-image of the personality. It is only when the written word is treated as a means to understand the way in which the image can be lightened with the Light of the Soul, and not as the way itself, that a person can achieve the above. All through the Monographs of the Pleroma, some 108 lessons, this instruction has been clearly given, perhaps not in the same picture-language as given in this Philosophy, but nevertheless it is essentially the same teaching.
The science of Psycho-Cybernetics became possible through the work of the physicists and mathematicians, as they rightly claim that any new step in human knowledge applicable to any science is more likely to come from outside of the science in question. “Pasteur was not a medical doctor. The Wright Brothers were not aeronautical engineers but bicycle mechanics. Einstein, properly speaking, was not a physicist but a mathematician. Yet
