The Shadow of the 3rd Century
Presented on: Tuesday, April 1, 1986
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin
Presentation 13 of 24
The Shadow of the Third Century
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, April 1, 1986
Transcript:
The date is April 13th, 1986. this is part 13 of the Hermetic Tradition Osiris to Franklin. Tonight's lecture is entitled: The Shadow of the Third Century by Roger Weir.
Again, I apologize for us having to come here. I realize that it's difficult to make changes.
The material that we've been pursuing has shown us that from the earliest documents in Egypt. From about 3000 B.C. until classical times, Roman times, have shown us a tradition which is unbroken. But a tradition who is a central character was esoteric and geared just for the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh and his immediate family were the recipients of the high called wisdom of the ages. And we saw that the basic change that happened about 0 A.D. was that this wisdom which had been the privilege of royalty was catastrophically changed and made available to everyone. That the spiritual wisdom of the ages of eternity was taken from the single thread available for royalty and put into the hands of the millions. This was a, an enormous change and one which was resisted on all fronts. To make spiritual wisdom available for everyone in effect freed everyone from the authoritarian systems which had been inculcated in the ancient world from almost time immemorial. The setting up of the first dynasty in Egypt was in effect setting up a control over society and over individuals. Which was unbroken in fact enlarged. And at the time of 0 A.D. the Emperor of the world at that time was Augustus Caesar who had chosen for himself the complete control over the spiritual destiny of the human race. So, what we observe is that there was a revolution. and that the revolution consisted of taking esoteric wisdom and making it exoteric. Making it available for everyone. At the same time the authoritarian control over the rituals and over the temples and over the public religious events, could not recognize with a validity of the spiritual change.
And so, in the 3rd century A.D., in the 200's, was an enormous struggle for the soul of human beings. And in this struggle the essential revolution, which had been wrought, was co-opted by the authoritarian systems. And we are the recipients today of this terrible struggle of the 3rd century A.D. We still bear the scars, socially and psychologically, of that struggle. And our deeper imagery in our minds is still confused due to the struggle of the 3rd century A.D. That is to say without help, without spiritual teachers modern man cannot find and restore his own soul without a, an almost superhuman effort. And this is why the, the commitment for being spiritual helpers in our time is one which must turn its back upon all of the authoritarian systems in the world. Money, position, power. Power both social power and personal power, individual power. And this of course produces a noticeable effect.
And in our Hermetic documents Hermes instructing Tat, the proverbial spiritual teacher instructing the proverbial spiritual student, tells him the closer you come to actually doing the good the more the bad will turn to evil and will hate you. That is to say in persons who are confused. In persons who do not have a strong spiritual background their evil side will come out more and more as they come into contact with someone who is trying to do good. And this process in Jungian psychology is known as provoking the shadow. And of course, this is the, the most dangerous threshold of all. Because we experienced initially as doubt. And then we experienced as anxiety. And then we experience as fearfulness. And finally, we experience it as hate. And so spiritual work, in our time, is almost always jeopardized. And one must literally steal oneself in order to continue and carry on in this way.
The reason for this is. that now for the next several weeks we will look at the 3rd century A.D. and try to understand what happened. Because it is there that they the subconscious flow of imagery, which would become white-hot by the change, the transformation of the age, took a terrible bend and beating at this time and was injured. And so, what comes down to us as the title of this book Shadow of the Third Century. What comes down to us is actually a cultural shadow archetype which haunts us to this day. And which is literally almost unchecked in our society at large.
This book Shadow of the Third Century I'm referring to because the author Alvin Boyd Kuhn was a personal friend of Dr. Heller. Who's placed this is. And the Gnostic society and the Ecclesia Gnostica owe a tremendous debt to Alvin Boyd Kuhn. His founding of the Ecclesia Gnostica is extremely important. and Stefan's work in our time, Bishop Heller, is extremely important because he is the sole person carrying on this tradition. This book was written in 1949 and was of course completely squelched at the time. And I don't believe it's ever been reprinted.
In the beginning he quotes Hermes, "The vise of a soul is ignorance. The virtue of a soul is knowledge." Or gnosis. And then he writes,
For in substance the contention of our work is that Christianity evolved and took historical form as a result of a corruption of high wisdom already extant. And not as the promulgation of new light and wisdom previously unknown. There is solid ground for the thesis that the religion, which can be successfully foisted upon popular acceptance, is never anything but a corruption of the more exalted understanding and truer wisdom. Baldly stated the faces here to be vindicated is that Christianity,
And he's speaking of church Christianity,
only gained the favor and held the allegiance of the masses of the population of the West for centuries because it succeeded in accommodating its message to the prevalent levels of general unintelligence. And in doing so inevitably distorted its truths into a ludicrous caricature and baneful forms of error and falsehood.
We find in the history of Christianity, again and again, individuals and communities who returned back to the words of Jesus and find their extraordinary wisdom. And then reviewing the ways in which that wisdom was blended into and finally covered up by the social forums, by the theological forums, by the church forms throughout the ages. And the longer that one follows that church history the more one finds that actually there has been a continuous descent from the authoritarian, theological doctrine era forms of Christianity from the third century on.
And in our time, in the late 20th century, the issue has now come back to the surface again. All of the necessary missing pieces had been filled in. By the finding of the Nag Hammadi. By finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. By the various scholarly techniques which enable us now to fill in the picture and go back can see. And we are able to understand now that the Hermetic tradition which we've been studying was from the earliest written records in Western civilization, the major spiritual tradition.
But in its archetypal form the Hermetic archetype when it's surfaced, very strongly in the 1st century A.D. in Egypt. Especially in the city of Alexandria, it was intercepted. Or illuminated by the poignant Christian message most provocatively provided in the Gospel of Saint John. and the message of the gospel of Saint John illuminated the Hermetic archetype in such a way as to produce a scintillating explosion of spiritual insight. It manifested itself in dreams, in visions, in extrasensory perception, in recollection of past lives. And all of this took place during the 2nd century A.D. And all through the 2nd century A.D., which is the 100's, one finds increasingly a bifurcation in society in the religious nature of people. Increasingly there are communities of individuals who understand, who know, who share among themselves the visionary capacity to experience divinity on a one-to-one basis.
And distinct from them increasingly during the 2nd century are the authoritarian forms based on people who have to use their understanding, their minds in a surrogate way to make up scenarios. to make up doctrines. to make up theological points. To make up arguments. Lines of development. And in all of this, at the beginning of the 3rd century A.D., in 202 A.D. the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus who came into power at that time assumed that the only threat to his divinity was the Christian Church in Alexandria. That in all of the Roman Empire there was not any viable alternative to the cult of the Roman Emperor being divine except for the Christian communities in Alexandria.
And the reason for this was that the Christian communities in Alexandria were becoming more and more viable, spiritually and socially now we reviewed, last year when we were speaking of archetypal Alexandria, that the Christian communities in Alexandria by the by 200 A.D. had evolved to the point where there was a democratic social forum that had arisen because of the religious experience.
The city of Alexandria was divided into 12 parts. 12 sections. And each of the 12 sections had a number of churches and church communities within their sections. Each one of those sections then elected, freely, democratically, a person who would be the representative of those people. The spiritual representative but also you must realize that this was a political power when seen from the right angle. Those twelve were called prespiters. And those twelve formed a council of elders for the Christian community in Alexandria. Which was the largest Christian community in the world in 200 A.D. those prespiters were to see to the administration of the catechetical school in Alexandria. Which had been founded some hundred years before. And which had taken upon itself the education of all of the Christian children. And they also had adult schools. So that by 200 A.D. the level of education and intelligence among the Christian communities in Alexandria was extraordinarily high. Extraordinarily high. which is why the emphasis was not so much at that time upon faith as upon knowledge. Upon gnosis. And the understanding of pistis or faith was the understanding from the point of experience and not blind acceptance.
When one reveals The Pistis Sophia, for instance, you can even see in the title The Pistis Sophia, the faith of wisdom. it is not blind faith at all. but is the faith that comes from the certainty of having understood. Not only in an intelligent way but in an experiential way. That divinity occurs with certainty in this cosmos. And that the contact of divinity with each individual personal human being is a certainty. And that the community based upon the communion of individuals is also a binding tie. This is where the word religion comes in. Religio. It's a Latin, it means binding.
Opposed to the religious community, the binding community of personal individuals coming together as a religious community in the Christian Sects. Opposed to that were the cults of the state Gods. Where the cults were based almost like on magical incantation. That one had to go through certain ritual sacrifices. One had to follow the letter of the law of rituals. And it was a cult experience. And the efficacy was upon the participation in the state cults.
So that the Christian communities in Alexandria we're becoming more and more powerful. In the sense that they stressed A) the personal dignity of each individual in the community B) the ability of those individuals to come together voluntarily and form a bound community and C) that that bound community could elect, consciously, their own representatives who would represent them in a large meta structure. Which was the council of twelve, the council of elders in Alexandria. And this form of personal individuals the bound community on mutual interfaith and knowledge. And the representatives who then formed a council of equals. So that the head of the Christian community was temporarily one of the twelve. And after a certain period of office that office of the head would go to someone else. And as the population of the council of elders would change there would be a tremendous Democratic turnover with almost no hitches.
This form jeopardized the entire structure of the Roman Empire. It jeopardized the state cults of religion. It jeopardized all of the power structures that were in effect at the time. The nascent Christian communities in Alexandria then formed a revolution. And in this we have as Kuhn still quotes, "We have the understanding that Christianity in the early third century A.D. recognized that it was safeguarding the essential truths, the wisdom, which had always been the province of man to know."
Augustine. Saint Augustine. Augustine in his City of God and in one of his other treatises writes,
"That which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients. And never did not exist. From the very beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh. At which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity." This is from San Agustin. This was written incidentally around 400 A.D.
All during the third century there was this struggle to make apparent by the authoritarian power structures, by the establishment if you wish, that Christianity was a new revelation. A recent revelation. Which negated all of the religious experience before of man. Or at least fulfilled all of the religious experience before of men. So as to make it no longer of those experiences effective or able to even be counted. And thus, Christianity was a brand-new ballgame. And only those who understood Christianity, in its organizational and theological and doctrinaire way, had a right to instruct others.
Opposed to that were the Christian communities who understood their Hermetic roots. Who understood their Gnostic insight. Because they in fact were able to experience it in themselves. And to this day the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt has a perfectly legitimate knowledge of what were called the Lost years of Jesus. Perfectly legitimate knowledge of the whole background, Hermetic background going into ancient Egyptian history.
This comes to us in the late 20th century of course as the most poignant problem of our time. And the battlefield is drawn. And I must say if you don't know it, yet that Los Angeles is the fulcrum focus of that battle. It will be won or lost here in Los Angeles in the next ten years.
Kuhn writes,
For what is it that the Christian Saint Augustine actually says. It stands is hardly less than a point-blank repudiation of all the chief assortations on which the structure of Church Christian tradition rests. Every child born to Christian parents in the 18th centuries has been indoctrinated with the unqualified belief that Christianity was a completely new and the first true religion in world history. That it was vouchsafed to the world from God Himself. Brought to Earth by the sole divine emissary ever commissioned to convey God's truth to mankind. That it flashed out amid the lingering murk's of pagan darkness as the first ray of true light to illumine the pathway of evolution for the safe treading of human feet. All previous religion was the superstitious product of primitive childishness of mind. Christianity was the first piercing of the long night of heathenism by the benevolent gift of God. But Augustine shatters this illusion and this jealously preserved fandom of blind credulity. From the remotest antiquity asserts there has always existed in the world the true religion. It illuminated the intellects of the most ancient sages, prophets, priests and kings. Built the foundation for every national religion. And has always been with man.
This of course is the evidence that we have found with the Hermetic tradition. The last three months that we've been investigating it. As far back as we can go in written documents. The Pyramid texts of ancient Egypt. The hieroglyphic texts that were carved on the walls of the tombs all the way back to 3000 B.C. the message is always the same. The message is that man when he dies his royal self goes into a, another world, another world. And in that other world he has a journey to make. And in that journey that he makes there are attempts always to challenge him to find out if he is spiritually pure. If he is spiritually pure, he may pass through the entire another world and rise again and resurrect again at the end of the other world. And come back into life again. Just as the Sun as it descends through the horizon and enters the night and successfully negotiates the night under the world and rises again on the horizon in the morning. And that the rising Sun is the eye of Horus. The eye of spiritual men reborn again. And resurrected again into the day. Into the light.
The Pyramid Texts always show us that this netherworld is journeyed by the essential purity. The soul if you will. The ka of the individual. The life breath. The quintessence. And that in this journey what preserves the purity is the instruction of the guide. That there always is a guide given to the soul. That the soul in its nature, in its quintessential shape, calls out in the cosmos for its complement. And that the complement of the soul is the guide. That the soul could no more exist then the guide could exist without the souls. That form a complementation together. And wherever there are souls there are guides. And because of the essential nature that all souls are the same, all guides are the same. In the sense that for the universal soul there's a universal guide.
And in the ancient Egyptian tradition this guide was named Thoth. Thoth. And the Greek description of Thoth was Hermes. And we have looked at Hermes. And we have seen how the Greek notion of Hermes being the younger brother of Apollo. The nightside of Apollo. And of course, Apollo is the Sun and Hermes is the netherworld. And so, they the netherworld Hermes and the Apollo go together. Just like Thoth and the soul of the Pharaoh go together. And the Pharaoh who is able to rise, his soul coming back again becomes the Horus. Becomes the Sun God. Becomes Apollo. And Apollo Horus or Apollo as he will be known.
And at the end of the 3rd century when it is apparent to the wisdom sages that for the time being man has lost control over the exoteric world. Over the church expressions. Over the political expressions. Over the social expressions of his true wisdom. They will condense into mystifying symbols the essential pattern of wisdom. The essential pattern being the archetypes being presented into images. And the images being denuded of all language so that just the images are there. So that there is no way for the profane to read the images. That the only way that the images can be read is through spiritual experience. Because only by opening oneself up to spiritual experiences do the images then contact oneself then play out their archetypal message in terms of spiritual instruction within the person.
And those last priests of the high wisdom will style themselves Hore Apollo. Horapollo. And we have preserved from the deserts of Egypt, from around 350-360 A.D. The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo. And of course, those hieroglyphic images will be the origins of what we call tarot decks today. And we'll see those. I have them on slide. And we will bring them in and about two weeks.
but what we have to understand today. We have to understand how in the 3rd century the whole structure of wisdom as a religious community of individuals struggled against the cult imposition of religion, which was not personal experience, but which was authoritarianlly stamped upon a person. in the one, in the personal experience, one discovers one's real identity. One discovers that the face in the mirror is just incidental. That the name that one is given as a child is just incidental. But that one has a spiritual personality which is quite unique and quite distinct. Which can be contacted by oneself. which can be known. That the spiritual person is then knowable. and that all human beings have a spiritual person. And that to know the other in the spirit is the true contact of human nature. the soul contact. And that it is this ability to spiritually have a community which sets aside the high wisdom tradition for models of profane world.
Kuhn writes in here. That I...think I'd better skip over some of this because we're, we're losing time on this. in the, "In the third century towards the end of it, the culmination of the tremendous travail of the whole century came out in a war." Just like in the 20th century, the culmination is coming out in a war. Not so much a nuclear war but a spiritual war which is going on now. Anyone who is working for the good can tell that we're getting closer and closer to a moment of truth because the rise of obstacles is becoming Assen topic. That is to say it's beginning to become almost like a vertical challenge. It's a sign that we're getting close.
At the end of the 3rd century the great struggle organized itself around the Roman Emperors. As you might imagine. They became the focal point. And the Emperor Constantine became the first Roman Emperor to declare Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire. And of course, Constantine's declaration of Christianity was not the high wisdom Christianity. It was not the personal Christianity. But it was the co-opted Christian Church which had been Romanized by that time enough to be acceptable to those in power.
The right-hand theologian for Constantine was a man named Eusebius. And even in your Eusebius in his famous Ecclesiastical history. Giving a history of the Christian Church. he writes in there and Kuhn quotes him, "And amazingly that those ancient therapeutae were Christians and their writings are our Gospels." And epistles with the Gospels and the letters of the ancient therapeutae were Christian.
And of course, we have seen in our archetypal Alexandria course series that the therapeutae were not just any Essenes. They were not the quarrian Essenes in the Holy Land. But the therapeutae I was a specific religious community outside of Alexandria.
And Alexandria is on an isthmus of land. And the Mediterranean Sea is to the north of it. But just to the south of it was a very large body of water called Lake Mareotis. And Alexandria was situated on the isthmus between these two bodies of water. So that Alexandria was a seaport. Because from Lake Mareotis there were connections with canals and tributaries leading to the Nile River. So that one could come by boat up the Nile, through the tributaries, through the canals into Lake Mareotis into Alexandria. On the far side of Lake Mareotis from Alexandria were low hills. And on those hills were located the communities of the therapeutae.
And the therapeutae were not so much Jewish esoteric sects as they were Hermetic esoteric sects. And of course, we have seen that the early childhood of Jesus was spent there among the therapeutae on the banks of Lake Mareotis outside of Alexandria. And it was there that he received his first religious instruction. And of course, with the therapeutae community it would have been personal meditation. He would have been brought up as a child to meditate in the spirit. It would have been second nature to him as it was to all in those communities.
So, there's there are traces even in the theologians who were there at the beginning of the making of the Roman state Christianity Church. Because it was common knowledge. It was the essential history. Everyone knew this. It was not esoteric yet. It didn't go underground for another 50 years. So, what we're presenting here which seems kind of shocking and strange to some people, was for the first 300 to 350 years the common knowledge. It was the basic truth in history of our experience.
one of the last individuals to present this of course was Moni. And Manichaeism is the Hermetic Gnostic Christianity presented fully without any kind of complication. And it was this Christianity which was forced out of the Roman Empire. Out of the Christianized Roman Empire. And forced to go into Central Asia. And Manichaeism when it went into Central Asia with Nestorian Christianity. Both were exiled about the same time. When they went into Central Asia in the early 5th century A.D., they took with them the pristine understanding of the Hermetic Gnostic Christian tradition. And it was this tradition which survived all the time intact in Central Asia. In the Gobi Desert. On the caravan routes. In the oasis along the way.
And this is why in 1902 when the first Western archaeologists went into the Gobi Desert. Right in the middle of the Gobi Desert at LuLon, a sand-covered cemetery for a very large trading community. Which had been covered for a thousand years by sand. In archaeological excavations Sir Al and his people unearthing the tombs found not only Buddhist and Daoist and other kinds of religious materials. But they found also Hermetic caduceus buried in the same tomb with the kind of Buddhist mantras on the hands of those holding up the caduceus. So that there was an inner penetration of Hermetic Gnostic Christianity with Mahayana Buddhism. And with Daoism. all of them became a single world religion. Unfortunately, the focus of this was in the Gobi Desert which through progressive geological desiccation was completely covered by sand. And only individuals who trickled out of that matrix, going to the West, going to the East, going to the north or the South carried that tradition with them.
Those going to the west of course became the Cathars in southern France. Who when they began to manifest again the Democratic personal religious communities which had existed in Alexandria. Which had been tyrannized by the Romans at the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. we're also tyrannized again in southern France. In fact, all of the Cathars were put to death. And we just a week or so ago celebrate Monsegur day which is the celebration respecting the death of, of the Cathars at Monsegur. All of the men, women and children were put to death.
Why is this? Why are communities of several hundred people such a threat? Cannot one Valley be lef.t cannot one community be left. The answer is no. Because the answer is as long as there is a visible living proof of the veracity of the high wisdom traditions. That it does not belong to monastic individuals who isolate themselves from life. But that it belongs to the living family traditions of human beings who do get along. And get along on a basis of shared spiritual experience. They will always be a threat to the powers that be. Because it's only a matter of time. That anyone can go and see that this is a better way of life. And experience for oneself that this is in fact the way of life that one should have naturally and with integrity for oneself. As long as there are any traces left whatsoever on the earth there will never be a contest. Fortunately, the traces are never obliterated fully. Because they exist within the psyche of man.
Turn your cassette now and it will commence playing again on the other side without a break in the continuity.
END OF SIDE 1
...Mentions again here our work which we alluded to last week, The Five Stages of Greek Religion by Gilbert Murray. Sir Gilbert Murray. And if you remember last week we talked about the central chapter, the third chapter in The Five Stages of Greek religion. which is entitled a Failure of Nerve. The Failure of Nerve. And that what happened to the classical world was that in the crunch of the 3rd century, the classical Greco-Roman psyche suffered a failure of nerve. That those who base themselves upon state cults found that the state cults no longer worked. That one could sacrifice to Jupiter Maximus. That one could sacrifice to the Emperor. One could go through all of the rituals, all of the ceremonies. Then they were ineffective. They no longer worked. It produced a spiritual crisis of unbelievable proportions.
It is just like in our time, increasingly, individuals are finding that none of the surrogates are any longer efficacious. The Yogi's are not able to meditate in their caves. The proselytizers are not able to deliver anything but increasing spiels. The cathedrals and churches increasingly are foundering upon a Picayune of problems and no longer able to deliver spiritual solace. All of the religious forms are becoming vacated of efficacy. Because this is the way that the archetype works. the archetype before it emerges takes away the power. Takes away the efficacy of the ceremonies. This happened as it's happening in our time now just beginning. It happened in the 3rd century A.D. The reaction of those who had been raised to this. to believe in the in the state Gods, was a failure of nerve. And so that forms a central chapter of Gilbert Murray's Five Stages of Greek Religion.
Kuhn quotes Murray here,
I've tried to sketch an outline the main forms of belief which Hellenistic philosophy moved or drifted. Let me dwell for a few pages more upon the characteristic method by which it reached them. It may be summed up in one word, allegory. It is applied to Homer. To the religious traditions. to the ritual. To the whole world. But allegory is not the frigid thing it seems to us. The Hellenistic age did not want, and they invent the theory of allegory. But allegory may make the emotions sensitive.
And this is, this is a most poignant realization that Murray is getting to. And Kuhn is going to disagree with him somewhat. But our concern is not with an argument between Kuhn and Murray. The point is this. That when one thinks allegorically, one uses the mind as the basic reference point of understanding. Because in order to understand allegory one has to interpret something mentally. When the mind is used as the basic reference then all expressions tend to become logical in form. Because the mind needs to have a logical expression...expressive form in order for it to work. Otherwise it cannot work. What the mind misses then and what logical form always misses is the mystery of actual experience. Actual experience vanishes and becomes an, a phantom. an illusion.
So that if one begins to think of religious experience of divinity in terms of allegory, one habituates oneself more and more. Addicts oneself to a mental construct. And thinks in terms of mental patterns. And in this way, one becomes trapped in the mind. And of course, as one becomes trapped in the mind, more and more. We have a colloquial way of saying about someone who is trapped in their own mind that they are neurotic. They're paranoid. Because increasingly other people become problematical to them. They are not real. How do I know in my mind that you are real? Well you are only real in terms of the way which my mind registers you. So, however I choose to register you. And I must have that right, mustn't I? That's how you exist. Well you can see but this breaks up humanity into granulated tyrannies of individuals who are alienated from each other. Alienated from truth. And who have no chance whatsoever to discover themselves. Because they alienate themselves from their own experience capacity. The only way to change this is through a transformation to take someone out of their mind into their spirit. And it was exactly this that the esoteric mystery communion was based upon.
Now in in the Hermetic documents. And we're running out of time tonight, so we'll have to get to this a little later. Extensively and we will. In the Hermetic documents, the eleventh document in the Corpus Hermeticum is called A Discourse of Mind to Hermes and it is the central pure, high real, Hermetic teaching about the nature of mind.
And I think. What time do we have? is it? We have time to start it? We'll start it and we'll go as far as we can. and then we'll, we'll just pick it up next week. We have we have all year to explore this. We're not in any rush whatsoever. We want to understand this in all humility. And we will just review the material forthrightly until it's apparent to ourselves.
So, this is the this is the document. And I'm going to start with a little bit beyond the beginning of it. Hermetic tractate number eleven occurs in two versions. And I'm going to start with the beginning of the second. And then shift back and start with the beginning of the first. The reason will be apparent.
The, the second begins this way, A Discourse of Mind to Hermes. and Hermes starts it off. It's a dialogue. "But I will not shrink from speaking as the thought has come to me." How is he going to speak? He's going to speak just as the thought occurs, spontaneously. For the spirit moves spontaneously without any effort. And it moves instantly. The mind moves very quickly but the mind always moves in time. But the spirit moves effortlessly in eternity. It's a noticeable difference.
How can I use a simile here? One of the spacecraft that intercepted Halley's Comet was called Giotto. And its speed when it intercepted Halley's Comet was 50 times the speed of a bullet. It is an incredible speed, but it is a finite speed. The mind moves extraordinarily fast but is a finite movement. The spirit has absolutely no limitation whatsoever. And has an infinite movement. It's that difference.
So, Hermes is speaking now. And he's speaking at a very high wisdom level. and he says,
But I will not shrink from speaking as the thought comes to me. Many men have told me. Many in diverse things concerning the universe and God. And yet I have not learned the truth. I ask you therefore master to make this matter clear to me. You and you alone I shall believe if you will show me the truth about it.
Notice now the emphasis here. It is not tell me the truth. Don't tell me the truth, show me the truth.
The mind then replies to Hermes in the dialogue. "Harken then my son. and I will tell you how things are as to God and the universe. Look upon things through me." Now the mind is inviting. that the structure is not to be used as a categorical kind of a pigeonholing. But that the mind is saying look through me. That the mind is now going to make a form which shows that what is in the center of the form is transparent. So, that the invitation is don't look at the structure that the mind is making but that the structure is only making a transparency window through which one will experience.
Look upon things through me and contemplate the cosmos as it lies before your eyes. That body which no harm can touch. The most ancient of all things. The cosmos in its unity is the most ancient of all things. The ancient one. Yet ever in its prime and ever new. See too the seven-subject worlds. Marshaled in ever-lasting order and filling up the measure of everlasting time as they run their diverse courses. And all things are filled with light. but nowhere is there fire. For by the friendship of contraries and the blending of things unlike, the fire of heaven has been changed into light. Which is shed on all below by the working of the Sun. And the Sun is the beginner of all the good. The ruler of all ordered movement. Governor of the seven worlds.
This is how the second version of Corpus Hermeticum eleven starts.
Now here's how the first version starts. And notice now that we are taken completely outside of the dialogue form. We're taken completely outside of the intellectual setting. Which was even minimal in the second presentation. But in the first presentation we are we are given a poetic direct transparent experience. With no preamble. No prologue. No hints at all. It starts like this,
God Aon cosmos time coming to be. God makes the Aon. The Aon makes the cosmos. the cosmos makes time. And time makes coming to be. The essence of God is the good. The essence of the Aon is sameness. the essence of the cosmos is order. The essence of time is change. And the essence of coming to be is life.
Do you see the incredible directness?
The reason that Corpus Hermeticum eleven is in two versions is that one of the versions is given as instruction early on in the cycle of instruction. And Corpus Hermeticum eleven is given, the very same thing, is given again at the end of instruction but given in its pristine form.
We have a parallel to this in the way in which the I-Ching was used. When the, when the Taoist order was included in the Confucian classics' version of the civil service exams in China. The first book that was given was no longer the Analects of Confucius but was the i-Ching. and the last book that was given was the I-Ching. And the reason for this was that when one tries to understand a unity like the I-Ching or like what is being given in here. The first time that one tries to understand it one uses one's mind. One tries to puzzle it out. One tries to hear it and remember it and think about it. And argue with the people about it. Or discuss with people about it. one tries to use the mind. It's only after experience with this for a long enough time that one finds that this is the wrong approach. That in fact, and the nature of the material is such that the mine finds itself again and again coming around into circles. And that the circles become
smaller and smaller. And finally, the smallest circle is what is called in logic a tautology. A equals A. And that when one gets to a tautological level one is able to perceive intuitively that there was no circle at all. That there was no tautology at all. But there was only an identity. because if it boils down to A equals A, well then there's only A.
So that the sense of identity occurs intuitively. And what happens then is that the mind stops playing or stops working and calms itself down. Because at the point of identity it becomes transparent. And what happens is one realizes that the mind was only a mask which one was using and that one's real self now occurs without the mind. Without the mind coming into play. the mind is fully at rest. It's not coming into play. It is totally transparent. But that one sense of self is there occurring. Continuously. Gently. Like a rhythm. And in that experience then one no longer needs to think about things. No thoughts come. And thoughts are not necessary. one experiences purely and then one is given the first part.
The first version of Discourse of Mind to Hermes where there's no dialogue at all. It's just God, Aon, cosmos, time coming to be. It's a cycle. But it's a cycle that is in unity. The workings of God are mind and soul. The workings of the Aon are immortality and duration. The workings of the cosmos are restatement in identity and restatement by substitution. The workings of time are increase and decrease. The workings of coming to be our quality and quantity. The I...Aon then is in God. The cosmos is in the Aon. Time is in the cosmos. And coming to be is in time. "The Aon stands fast in connection with God. The cosmos moves in the Aon. Time passes in the cosmos. And coming to be takes place in time. God is the source of all things."
And so, in Corpus Hermeticum eleven we find the evidence that the instruction that was given of the high wisdom tradition was portioned out in a cycle. That in the beginning the stress was upon gnosis and knowledge. Upon intelligibility. Upon understanding. But that this was not to build up a mind. Not to build up an intelligible structure as a doctrine. It was not meant to build up a theology. But was meant to order intelligence to the point of clarity. To order the mind so that the structure could be seen as something which one could look through. To magnify the fabric of intelligence. So that one worked through the warp and the loop of the mind and saw that one occurred and existed without it. One could occur and exist with it indeed. And in this life and these limitations we do. But that the soul which is the shape of the spiritual person does not need that limitation. And that purifying oneself to that point of not leading needing that limitation. That when death occurs. When the body dies. And when the mind structure folds the soul spirit still occurs in its pristine purity and is able to take the journey and come back. And that's this. That was the high source of eternity. And the proof, not of man's immortality but of his divinity.
Well next week we'll go into it. we'll start with Corpus Hermeticum eleven. It's fairly extensive. and we'll go into it all. And we'll go into more of the crisis of consciousness in the 3rd century A.D. Thanks for coming out on an evening like this.
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