SECOND YEAR PHILOSOPHY

     LESSONS OF THE GOLDEN DAWN

       INTRODUCTORY LESSON I

As an introduction to these lessons, we wish to bring an understanding of what our teachings are like and why.  In preparation of a work so important in that one’s own welfare over the span of many lifetimes is at stake, it is very important that it should be understood in outline before we enter into the deeper studies.

In the past in the approach of the path of attainment of the great schools, we found that they always started from one or two focal points.  These often entered the study of the outside world and working toward and into the Self through illumination and realization.

The other method was to work on the consciousness working from within outward into the world.  Thus, we see that in both cases, the maxim “as above, so below” always applies.

In our school, the Holy Order of Mans, our method or point, is directly between those two.  While we move toward the Self within our own bodies, developing the consciousness and conscious reality, we also work in the outside world and develop our consciousness there. 

Thus, it is that we learn as much of one level of vibration as another.  In reality, we follow the teachings of the Master Jesus and the ancient wisdom teachings.

You will find, as you go along, that the universe is not made up of a number of separate things.  All things are in the mind of the Father.

This is a rather difficult concept for you to accept at first, but do as you would with any other statement in this series of lessons.  When you find a statement which raises a doubt as to its validity, just put it on the mental shelf until it becomes of use to you later in the instructions.

For, primarily, we are interested in finding the causes of all things around us and in our personal life as well as to know how to adjust them or acquire them.  It is one thing to analyze various things around you that you know exist, for the purpose of finding their cause.  It is still another thing to know that there are effects which must exist and should be understood.

We really have three forms of life: mineral, animal and vegetable; and what we are interested in is man, primarily, and secondly, all other forms of life.  The difference between animals, plants, minerals and man, is that only man may develop his own brand of consciousness.  In this state of consciousness, which he picks up or chooses to work with, lies the salvation or the determinate of his evolution from a spiritual standpoint.

You have often said, in making a statement, that you know a thing exists because you can see it.  Now just what do you mean by this?  Do you mean you see it?  Or in other words, does your consciousness and your understanding see it.  You are undoubtedly talking about what your eyes see -- what you think is an infallible existence.

Psychologically, to use the word see means that there is a picture in your consciousness.  There is actually no way by which you could be sure that when you see a thing, it is really there or that what we see really is.

We may test our eyesight or we may test by touching the object, tasting it and smelling it, to prove that it exists.  But actually, how can we be sure that our feeling and smelling and tasting is absolutely dependable.  We might be looking at a pictured image of our own mind and the beautiful symmetry that exists in it might be four or five hundred years before this present instant.   

There is but one type of sight which is actually dependable, and that is what we see with our own spiritual eyes when we have developed this faculty consciously.

Like going to a moving picture, so to speak, we see a number of pictures, but they look all to be one.  In other words, we look at so many frames of pictures per minute.  This gives us the reality of motion and life.

The holy order of mans study is very much like the motion picture film and its numerous frames in order to see the true picture and its motion.  For in these studies are incorporated the teachings of the Methodist, Baptist, Religious Sciences, Catholics, Greek churches; all of the teachings together.

In other words, in each frame or series of frames of the film, we put a church separate.  But when we show them together, they are shown on the screen of life as the composite picture of God’s creation.

We are not taking just one part of the whole truth, but are combining all of the basic truths into one teaching without any personal opinions of our own.  The realities taught by many great avatars and the one of our own Age, Lord Jesus Christ, embraces not only the Catholics, but also the Protestants, Jewish and Gentile, Buddhist and Hindu.  God’s way is just plain God’s creation.  It has nothing to do with us as progenitors.

There is only one progenitor.  That is the Father, and his emissary, the Lord Jesus Christ.

You have been taught, for instance, the scientific wisdom and understanding of how to see and know in simple language any child could understand.  You will be led toward the understanding of the Bible in a simple way not translated by us, but just as it was.

The scientific facts will be also given in accordance with the authorities of science.  But these, too, will collate and support the teachings of Jesus.  We look with our physical eyes, and again, we say we see.  But as we will learn, we do not see much.  In this supposedly dense world, there is a great deal of space, even in the most solid of objects.

All substance is basically light and radiation within the body of the Father.

All is vibration, all is energy in action.

Therefore, what we see depends upon the vibration we receive and the existence of the thing.  This will play a very important part in all the mysteries, or all the things of reality, and soon you will appreciate the wondrousness and the wonders of the Father’s creation.

For man is very much like a soldier during combat in a tank being driven over the terrain in order to meet the opposing forces.  The only things he sees is through the prismatic lenses of the periscope or visionary slits.  But the actual outside he does not see.

Neither have you, yourself, seen the outside world around you.  You have only collected vibratory pictures of light radiation, assembling them in your brain which has produced a picture that you have accepted as true sight.

The translation or interpretation of vibrations goes on rapidly as the vibrations of the outer world continues to pulsate and stimulate the centers of the brain.  The translation and interpretation of this rapid stimulation of the brain is based on our knowledge or comprehension of the understanding given to us through our educational concepts.  

Our pictures and the understanding of what we see in the ultimate analysis depends on what we comprehend.  The interpretation or translation of that depends on whether we have received that vibration previously or the word picture which we have been educated with.

When we look at something we have never seen before, there is no familiar vibration reaching the brain to associate with because of the lack of education or the lack of know- ledge.  We, therefore, cannot interpret and have no name for it.

We have no consciousness or understanding of the real nature, use or intent of the object.  We still look for the answer, but only through association.

Here is where the mystic would go within on a higher plane of vibration seeking all associated vibration to discover its nature.

Science of the past years has many times forced itself out on a limb and has created missing links enabling them to bring together the composite parts of the picture of the material world.  Every time they try to forge one of these links to fill in the missing space, they sooner or later must retract these unknowns.  

This is primarily because science has not, as yet, grown in its wisdom, to a point where it will bow its head and yield to the ever-existing evidence that the Father is here, everywhere, all places, all time and the source of all power and all force.

For it is only when we become humble that we become great.  Likewise, science, when it starts to use the value “X” to equal the Father power as an infinite source of reality, it will then have no longer any gaps in its scientific formulation.

Science cannot create the already existent power at the center of the solar system.

As an example of the fact that science is an outgrowth of philosophy rather than philosophy an outgrowth of science, is the well-prepared paper.  He claimed, as did his ancient predecessor, Ptolemy, that the earth was round like a ball and that we lived on the outside of it.

Unlike his predecessor, he claimed what might be known to you as the heliocentric theory of our solar system, which explained that the sun, not the earth, was the center to our solar system, causing night and day due to the movement of the earth on its axis.  This also was a basic reason for bringing forth the understanding of the moons phases and many things regulating the tides and so forth.

At this time, the popular mind promptly rejected the theory, but science mind gradually accepted it.  At that time, they did not have the telescopes we do today.  In the year 1500, Copernicus was considered a great Mathematician and philosopher, for he realized one thing.  That is, the inevitable necessity that you have a unity of one God of all people.

It was necessary that science, religion and philosophy leave no gaps.  If the earth was the center of the universe and whole creation of our Father, then man on earth might well be accepted as one of God’s greatest objects of care.  Therefore, the other planets in this system must also be of importance and a part of the scheme of God, the one universal being.

Today, the Copernican Theory is taught throughout all the schools and universities which teach true cosmology.  All of these things have been proven since his time.

This does not destroy life after death nor does it change the beauty and consistency of our God and creator, but it does show one thing that we must learn -- to be conscious of the reality of the seen or unseen by the physical eyes.  This opens up new vistas and greater understanding in our conscious existence.

In doing so, we have placed one foot upon the path of the most wondrous and exciting adventure -- the adventure of life.