Gordon - The path of initiation : spiritual evolution and the restoration of the western mystery tradition

This book is dedicated to the Rational Soul of the World, to the memory of both H. P. Blavatsky and A. A. Bailey, and to all who are truly working toward the practical unfoldment of the impending New Age of Enlightenment for humanity as a whole.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In being able to produce this book my grateful thanks are due to several people, but primarily to my wife Helena, whose enthusiasm for the subject knows no human bounds and whose capacity for remembering and finding useful references is beyond imagination.

Others to whom I am most grateful for their helpful comments and suggestions include Alistair Coombs, Ron Wallwork, Barry Thomson (Librarian of the Theosophical Society in London), plus Christine Morgan and Laurence Newey of the Lucis Trust for their continuing enthusiastic support and also for consenting to the use of extensive references from the works of A. A. Bailey. My thanks also to the Fintry Trust library and the Theosophical Publishing House in Adyar, Chennai.

Finally, I would also wish to add here an in memoriam mention of Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, an academic colleague and friend to many of us, whose sudden and unexpected passing from our midst at such an early age (in 2012) has sadly deprived the worldwide community of esoteric studentship of one of its brightest and most prolifically informative lights.

PROLOGUE

In this exploration of the subject of spiritual initiation, our overall concern is to derive a completely new and objective understanding of what the subjective world of consciousness (and its evolution) is all aboutleading all the way to divinity itself. In a very real sense, this book concerns itself with what the concepts of God Immanent and God Transcendent (i.e., the microcosm and the Macrocosm) actually involve. But, in practical terms, these have to be blended synthetically together before the associated parts can be studied or analyzed separately with any real degree of intuitive understanding.

The whole (originally sacred) subject of initiation and Adeptship has, most regretfully, been traduced over the last century by foolish or unscrupulous individuals and groups wishing to elevate themselves spiritually at absurdly great speed and at little personal cost, or otherwise to benefit financially from these same ingenuously-minded types. The author thus approaches this subject with more than a little concern about it being presented in the most objective manner possible, such that it can be seen to follow a fundamental logic, accessible to all with an open mind and clarity of thought.

Extensive reference and cross-reference has correspondingly been provided so that the reader can follow the associated psychology without the constant need to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. These cross-references are also quite deliberately taken from historically and geographically very different cultures so that readers can see for themselves that the central principles have always been recognized as universal in application throughout the ages. In those instances where I have otherwise put forward my own speculative suggestions, I have hopefully done so in a manner that clearly indicates that this is the case.

The book itself is based upon a mixture of personal experience (over some thirty-five years) plus fairly extensive literary reference to the works of others who have evidently experienced and understood a great deal more than I have in this lifetime. It is therefore presented merely as a reasoned perspective for general consideration. If anyone reading this work comes to believe that I am making claims or suggestions beyond provable reason, that is up to them. They are entitled to their own views. All I am trying to do is advance the cause of practical esoteric philosophy in such a manner, with reasoned logic and supporting reference, that it is seen to be both useful and even fundamental to the further evolution of human intelligence and spiritual enquiry in the modern era. I would otherwise like to make it clear that I make no claims whatsoever as to the involvement of Adept influence in support of what I have written in this or any other work. The rationale of their existence as a rather more advanced kingdom in Nature than the merely human must stand or fall on the combined basis of necessitythrough the logically natural and progressive workings of spiritual evolutionary developmentand the factual testimony of direct observers working with them in many lands, the world over, through many past centuries and millennia.

The issue of the Adept Brotherhood is dealt with at some length toward the latter end of the book, in an attempt to put the whole subject of Adeptship in due context. However, in that regard it is worth pondering upon the following reported comment of one lesser Adept to the effect that

the Masters of the Wisdom Who are advanced enough to work upon the larger areas of the spiritual plan are oft amused at the importance which the disciples and aspirants of the world attach to Them, and at the manner in which They are overestimated. Can we not realize that there are members of the Hierarchy Whose grasp of truth and Whose knowledge of the divine Plan is as much in advance of the Masters known to us as They are in advance of the savage and of the undeveloped man?

The originating idea behind this book derives from many years of listening to two groups of friends talking about initiation and the Mysteries from completely different and equally conflicting viewpoints, as though they were in the same place, looking forward but standing back to back. One group involves those so fascinated with the subject that they glamorize it (and their own adulatory relationship to it) out of all proportion. The other group involves those so modestly concerned not to be seen as pushing themselves forward that they present themselves as being unable to consider the subject in any sort of detail for lifetimes to come. But there is also a quite separate third group, comprising those minds that see the Mysteries in general as mystical flim-flam, to be considered only as a historical phenomenon. None of these opposing approaches is at all helpful in trying to attain to an objective perception of what initiation and the Mysteries were (and are) really all about.

This work is really aimed at two other groups, however. First, those who realize that they have somehow come to be affected (they often know not how) by deeply esoteric influences that keep peculiarly reemerging into their lives, despite their wish to avoid them; second, those who have become so familiar with the consistency of such experience that they recognize there to be something good and useful leading them in that same direction. They thus want to know more through reason, without being completely taken over by mere fascination. Of these two, the second group will probably draw far more from this book, because of their natural common sense directing the way. However, I hope that it proves useful for others as well.

One other consideration involves the difference between the approach to derivation of knowledge adopted by esotericism on the one hand and orthodox science on the other. In rather simplistic terms this difference is the same as that followed by neo-Pythagoreans and neo-Platonists on the one hand and Aristotelians on the other. The former approach is that of always deducing from the universal to the particular, following an interdisciplinary system of applied universal principles, which concerns itself with essential (that is, qualitative) function in the greater continuum. The latter endeavor is to draw conclusions by a reductive process of systematic classification that separates and diversifies through focus on mere forms of appearance. That is why Raphaels famous painting of Plato and Aristotle emerging from the Academy depicts the former as pointing heavenward and the latter, in opposition, pointing earthward.