THE RISE OF THE GOLDEN DAWN

       LESSON X

Before progressing with this section, all students should study the science section of the spiritual physician's healing course.

It is an understood and accepted fact by science that vibration is given forth by all materials and is given forth as an impression, or what we might call, a personality.

This is found through experiments, but these do not explain to this fact, but has failed to come up with the answer.

In medicine, doctors take the symptoms to find the germs that cause a certain disease.  In physics, if a new phenomenon is discovered, they make similar experiments hoping to find the law which describes the processes which induced the phenomenon.  This is the inductive method.

We, in the holy order of mans, use deductive methods.  We proceed from the general laws to their particular principles and formulae.  After all, the universe does not consist of a multiple of separate things -- it is united -- a whole.

When one begins to have a fair understanding of the whole, he discovers gaps and missing links in his understanding, and so, necessarily searches further.  Through this method, we may see that there are effects which are not observed, but must exist and which must be sought out.

All matter is in a state of vibration.

You and I often say:  "I know a thing exists because I can see it."  Why?  When I say:  "I see it." I mean I see it. In other words, my consciousness-- my understanding --sees it. This does not mean my body or brain, but my consciousness.

The word "see" means that there is a picture in the consciousness, but there is no way, actually, that we can be sure we see it-- really.  We can test our eyesight.  We can touch it, taste it, and smell it to prove its existence.  But are we sure that these senses are absolutely dependable?

Have you not had dreams at night, and in those dreams, seen pictures?  Have you not seen buildings, places and people just as real -- just as alive and full of color -- as those in your awakened state?  Are you willing to say the things you see in a dream are actually existing?

When you see a thing when you are awake, it is the consciousness realizing a picture of it.  A blind man may look at a green field and see nothing, but does that prove it does not exist?  The picture is made on the retina of the eye -- the screen of the eye -- through the lens.  It is this picture that we perceive.  This question is:  Is that picture a denser, more substantial object?

I urge you to strongly think about this question in all your spare time.  When you think deeply, you are bound to come to a very startling realization.

One has seen moving pictures thrown on a screen.  Well, this is what is happening when the pictures after passing through the lens and passing through the air leave an impression on the screen.

Scientists say it is light, but what is light, but vibration?  Also, what is seen on the motion picture screen is vibration.  So remember, when you think you see something, it is not the thing itself you see, but the picture the vibrations make on the retina of the eye.

If something interferes with the vibration of an object, then the picture of it is changed -- the thing itself is not changed.  If I put blue or red glasses on, then the picture on the retina of my eye will be tinted blue or red, but the object, itself, will not change.  I do not change the color of the object.  I change the vibrations entering the eye.  I am merely intercepting the vibrations from the object with a filter deleting certain vibrations.  So, the altered vibrations from the object meet my eye.  I have a picture of the condition that seems real -- but is not.

Therefore, it is evident that what we see depends upon the vibrations we see and not the existence of the object we are looking at.  For other vibrations may amalgamate themselves with the vibrations from the object, and so we have an imperfect picture of the object.  Along with this, we have the interception of the vibrations by the shell or our atmosphere which is determined by our manifest thinking, wishes and emotions and the vibrations have to travel through these to the eye.  This will show you that the only true sight is spiritual sight.

Thus it is that the world around you takes on false impressions, for our interpretations of the vibration and light given off from the objective world are greatly distorted by our misunderstandings.  You might rightly say:  "Really, what kind of world am I living in?"

You might liken the retina of an eye to a motion picture screen.  When you sit in a theater, light is cast on the screen in front of you after passing through the lens of the projector behind you.  It is as though you are sitting inside of the eye at a point between the lens and retina.

When you are in the theater, you have no idea what is going on behind the screen.  There may be a number of men and women arranging the next scene or the next act, or the next stage setting, but you are only concerned with what is on the screen.

The motion picture screen in the theater is flat, while the screen of the retina is a curved surface.  The screen in the theater is a thin sheet, while the retina is a rough surface composed of rods and cones of skin and membrane, protruding towards the lens a little distance.  Thousands and thousands of these rods and cones are in every square one-fourth inch and all of these are connected with nerves running back to the optic nerve which is connected to the brain.

It is as though thousands of electric wires were connected through every inch of the surface of a large screen and all of these wires finally came into a cable.

In other words, the light vibrations of the picture causes electrical disturbance to crowd together and make another impression which is interpreted by the mind.  Impressions made upon the brain are thousands of interrupted impulses which cause a stimulus of the nerve centers of the section of the brain that they are related to.  In this section of the brain, when the vibrations are received in the stimulus, consciousness translates the stimulus into an understandable picture.

The translation or interpretation of these vibrations goes on rapidly as the vibrations continue to pulse and stimulate the centers of the brain and the rapid interpretation of these small stimuli are based on our education, comprehension and understanding -- on our pre-conceived ideas of what it means, or what we have seen similar before.

Therefore, in the ultimate analysis, the things we see and hear depend on our interpretation of the vibrations we receive and on what we have received before.  

Therefore, when we look at a thing or things that we have never seen before, the vibrations received in the brain area cannot be translated because of the lack of education and knowledge.  We have no name for it nor similitude.  We have no consciousness of its real nature or use or intent.

Therefore, you may be looking at the things and still not know it.

From the mystical standpoint, if you did not know anything, you could not see anything, so our seeing does not prove anything to us.  A picture from our experience and impressions previously recorded in our consciousness does not prove that the thing is as we interpret it.  Is it in this world?  Or, in the next above?

Do you realize that during dreams, you see things that have a full state of reality with all the depth of color, feeling and emotion as when you see things as they are when you are awake?

Yet, as real as they may seem, they do not have existence outside of your consciousness.  If you close your eyes and press your fingers gently upon them, in the darkened fields in front of you, you see flashes of color -- colored fields -- as colorful according to the firmness of the pressure of the fingers on the eyes.

These colors will seem clear and bright to you as any you have ever seen, but they are only in your consciousness.  They don't exist outside of your body, yet, they traveled on the same seen path as though you have received them with the eyes open.

Our dreams of being chased, falling off buildings, climbing trees and obstacles until we are tired, overheated and fearful have as much effect on us physically and psychologically as in actuality, for they are real to us individually.

The hypothesis that ether existed in all space was used to fill in an existing gap which science had no explanation for.  Therefore, they created an artificial thing.  Science was inventing to account for the movement of light waves -- vibrational waves -- through space.

It was believed that waves moved on the surface or in the body of something.  Since they could not find the existence of anything in space that fit such a theory, they invented the idea of ether and proclaimed it as an actually existing thing.  Later experience and experiments proved that ether was unnecessary and that vibration did not need something to move through.

These findings caused them to revise over 117 of the theories and postulations of  which the theory of ether formed one of the most important links, and this made obsolete many textbooks, maps, and charts in all languages.  This makes me ask the question:  "Now, do I really exist?  Or, know whether I should find my house where I left it this morning?  Are my students real?"  The answer is:  "My students are real because I can see them without my physical eyes."

Copernicus, who declared the world was round, was a great mathematician, who worked for many years on his theory.  In 1500, he was called to Rome to take the Chair of Mathematics there.  He realized the influence of religion upon the people, and also, the principles of religion in their relation to Cosmogony, and for this reason, he delayed for many years the publishing of his new theory.

He knew that it would bring him the accusation of heresy from the Church, because, said he, "If the earth is the center of the universe and really the whole center of God's creation, then man on earth might well be one of the greatest objects of God's care.  But if my theory is right and the earth is but one of many planets revolving in space, and not even the largest of them, and if these others are also inhabited by men, then this earth upon which we live and the men upon this earth may not be so important in God's scheme."  Such an idea would upset the theories and statements of the Church.

In the face of such reasoning, he offered his theory some time after 1540.  On may 24, 1543, just as his theory was being published in book form for universal reading, he died suffering under all the attacks, criticism, and punishments that the Church and narrow scientific world could heap upon him.  The unpopularity of his theory was due to its newness and simplicity.  Today, the Copernican Theory -- as it is called -- is being taught in the schools and universities as a true Cosmogony, although its own inventor realized that it could present no proof and it was condemned as inconsistent with Church doctrines at the time it was offered.  

In comparatively recent times, this Copernican Theory has been attacked in principle even by one of the schools of science.  In 1919, a group of English scientists carefully photo- graphed the stars near the sun during a solar eclipse.

A comparison of pictures taken of the same region -- when the sun was distant -- showed that the stars had apparently been shifted away from the sun during the eclipse in accordance with the prediction of Professor Einstein.  The amount of the shift was equivalent to about 1.75 inches at the edge of the sun's disc, or far more than the largest stellar parallax.

The importance of this discovery was immediately recognized -- at least in part.  It was the first proof that light does not travel in straight lines.  The deviation was small when interpreted according to Copernican ideas, but the fact that there was a deviation calls into question the basic Copernican assumption, and the distances we assume the Cosmic bodies to be from earth.  This new theory and approach, which science generally is reluctant to accept, is known as the curved-space theory.  This curved-space theory is explained in further lessons.  We do not intent to go deeply into this matter at the present time.

All we wish to do is call your attention to the fact that observations made by the eye -- the human eye -- and interpreted by the human consciousness does not prove the existence or actuality of anything or any effect.

If we can get our members into the frame of mind -- into that analytical attitude where they will not accept anything upon hearsay or upon casual observation -- not even our own teachings and lessons -- but will insist upon individual experience and real knowledge from within, rather than from without, we shall have accomplished our great work in making real thinkers, real mystics, and real creators of facts our of our members, and that is our principle purpose.