Mystery Schools

A Mystery school is a university of the soul, a school for the study of the mysteries of the inner nature of man and of surrounding nature. By understanding these mysteries, the student perceives his intimate relationship with divinity, and strives through self-discipline and devotion to become at one with his inner god.

The First Mystery Schools

Time marched on and the race waxed lusty in power. As Lemuria gave birth to Atlantis, the third root-race to the fourth, the fiercest battle was waged: the war between the lords of light and truth and the lords of darkness and ignorance.

Moral strength is not guaranteed by awakening intellect or by the possession of psychic and physical power. The Atlanteans at their acme of development were a civilization of vigorous intellect motivated by psychophysical force, unrestricted in the main by moral stamina. Magic, which had been a natural gift of the Lemurians, in the hands of these giants became matter-magic, psychical magic, and the race plunged into an orgy of sorcery, the effects of which we are experiencing even today in outbursts of hate and madness.

Not all the Atlanteans, however, were overpowered by their own strength; not by any means. Nevertheless, a great portion of them became sorcerers of evil and perished in their tracks. Others, in whom the light of spirituality was "seen as through a glass darkly," became unhappy victims of the nefarious waves of unmoral power that swept over the continental system of Atlantis; in their confusion they wandered hither and yon, following false gods, unworthy guidance. A few -- probably several millions, but few in proportion to the enormous population of the Atlantean continents -- remained strong and clean throughout, morally illumined through contact with spirit. These became the chosen disciples of the Brotherhood, the stimulators of virtue and discipline in the land.

Until then there had been no call for Mysteries, truth having been the common property of mankind. With the increase of ego, selfishness was born out of desires and passions hitherto unknown, and but too often knowledge and power were abused, until finally it became necessary to limit the number of those who knew.

To insure the continuity of the race, something had to be done. Matters had come to such a pass that the only recourse was to establish a spiritual centre in each national unit which would serve as a safeguard for the truths imparted there and as a secret training centre where genuine seekers could be disciplined and instructed and, if found worthy, could learn truth firsthand -- i.e., through initiation.

The Brotherhood, therefore, which had already established invisible lines of esoteric instruction even in late Lemurian times, in which those sensitive enough could be trained, purified, and made strong for the reception of truth and its safeguarding, now launched a systematic campaign. Disciples, messengers, went forth and inaugurated esoteric colleges, universities of the soul and special training centres for the select purpose of gathering into them the choicest men and women for discipline and instruction in the mysteries of nature.

Thus were established some four or five million years ago, when Atlantis was threatening to destroy itself through spiritual iniquity, the first Mystery schools. From these early centres sprang other Mystery schools in all parts of the Atlantean world. By the time the Atlanteans were in their heyday of material splendour, these schools were working their hardest to stem the increasing tide of sorcery. Many -- millions probably -- were saved through the establishment of the Mysteries. The more awakened of the race intuitively sought training there, while the great bulk of humanity, though unable to partake of the sacred rites of initiation on account of insufficient interior development, nevertheless were helped by the indirect radiation of spiritual force.

There were those, however, who had tasted of Darkness and found it to their liking, and whose hardening hearts led them to receive instruction in evil discipline. Simultaneously, therefore, with the establishment of spiritual centres of light and truth, schools of darkness were founded whose pledged votaries became in time the left-hand adepts. The lords of light and truth united in a calm invincible force to resist the terrible and ever-growing iniquities of the left-hand Adepts, the Atlanteans. This led to the foundation of still more Secret Schools, temples of learning, and of Mysteries inaccessible to all except after the most terrible trials and probations. . . .

. . . The Mysteries were imparted to the elect of that Race when the average Atlantean had begun to fall too deeply into sin to be trusted with the secrets of Nature.

Then there was the most dramatic moment. A moment millions of years long in the whole history of this round: the turning point of the cycle from matter to spirit. At the middle of the fourth root-race in this fourth round the Atlanteans saw spirit and matter equilibrated: which way would the scales turn?  Would they turn towards the light and spirit, and the eventual liberation of mankind or towards darkness and matter, and the enslavement of humanity? A great tremor shook the earth: would innate spirituality prove stronger than the weight of acquired materiality? Would mankind ascend the luminous arc or fall headlong into the pit of matter on the descending shadowy arc? Of the billions of human beings whose hearts must be weighed against the feather of spirit, each one had to pass the fateful test alone: failure, and be swept downwards into still greater materiality, unable to rise with spirit during the present great world cycle; success, and the rise upwards in the general current of evolutionary progress until self-conscious oneness with divinity may again be reclaimed.

The moment of a million years or so passed. Fortunately for the human race, due in large part to the efforts of the Mystery schools, the majority retained sufficient awareness of divinity to balance the scales in their favour. An unconscious choice for millions, but nevertheless a choice made by the better part of their natures -- by what slender majority perhaps we shall never know.

Raison d'etre of the Mysteries

Cataclysm after cataclysm occurred, and the leaden slag of the fourth race sank to its doom, deluged by the waters of heaven and earth as they flooded the lands according to karmic law. Along with the sinking of Atlantis, which extended over several million years, new lands had been rising in other parts of the globe, and these became peopled as time went by with certain of the Atlanteans who settled there in two or three great migratory waves.

Thus the fourth root-race gave birth to the fifth whose land was the Desert of Shamo or Gobi and surrounding tablelands -- a country whose present sandy wastes give no hint of lands once rich with verdure, where forests and lakes witnessed a succession of civilizations as grand as any the world has ever known. Here for many millions of years, while Atlantis was involved in her death struggle, seeds of the new race were being sown in virgin soil.

Nature is beneficent in her workings. While the consequences of her human children must be met and faced by them through the working of karma and cyclic re-embodiment, yet at each new racial birth she casts her seed in freshly-turned soil, so that the child-race may be conceived in purity and nurtured in spirituality. Peopled thus with egos who had remained clean and strong through the Atlantean upheavals, and helped once again by the re-entrance into their midst of semi-divine beings, the new race became a focus of spiritual light.

The highest Planetary Spirits, those, who can no longer physically appear on Earth but at the origin of every new human kind; at the junction of, and close of the two ends of the great cycle. And, they remain with man no longer than the time required for the eternal truths they teach to impress themselves so forcibly upon the plastic minds of the new races as to warrant them from being lost or entirely forgotten in ages hereafter, by the forthcoming generations. The mission of the planetary Spirit is but to strike the KEY NOTE OF TRUTH.

Simultaneously with the establishment of the Mystery schools in Atlantis some four or five million years ago, the fifth or Aryan race was slowly coming into being, immensely aided by egos of spiritual refinement attracted there by ties of divine kinship. Gradually the soil was prepared and, the work of striking the "Keynote of Truth" having been accomplished, the demigods retired to their superior spheres. One million years ago the new race was ushered into adult existence impressed with the knowledge of "eternal truths.''

As the centuries passed and civilization succeeded civilization, the love of truth once again became dimmed in human hearts and the ancient precepts fell into disuse. The Mysteries were withdrawn even further, so that the knowledge once universal became the prized guerdon bestowed by the great Brotherhood upon that choice minority whose lives were dedicated to truth and truth alone, unstained by weakness or selfish ambition. With enduring consistency the ongoing purpose of the Mysteries has remained threefold in character:

(1) The persistent spiritualization of the thought-life of humanity so that knowledge of things spiritual may penetrate into the heart and life in time may become a benediction of peace instead of a tragedy of conflict;

(2) Seeding grounds of adepts, nurseries for future recruits, who through trial and initiation may become fit to receive the supreme dignity of membership in the great Brotherhood; and

(3) The preservation of truth for future races unsullied by human hand; and the polishing of the knowledge of truth through investigation by trained seers of the secrets of nature in worlds visible and invisible.

The first of these aims is fulfilled by the periodic appearance of world teachers, the inspirers of what later became the great religious and philosophical schools: messengers from the Lodge who come forth at cyclic periods to strike anew the "Keynote of Truth." Hence every great religion, every noble philosophy, every fundamental scientific insight was born from the Sanctuary, to become a new religion, a new philosophy, a new science: fresh and new for the age and the people, but ancient beyond time because nurtured in the womb of esoteric antiquity.

All that is good, noble, and grand in human nature, every divine faculty and aspiration, were cultured by the Priest-Philosophers who sought to develop them in their Initiates. Their code of ethics, based on altruism, has become universal.

The second of these aims is ages-long in accomplishment and deeply occult: to rouse the hidden fire of divinity in the human soul, and through the kindling of that flame burn the dross of imperfection, sloth, and unworthy desire from the heart. One of the impelling aims of such discipline is to restore to humanity inner sight, to free people "from every danger of being enslaved whether by a man or an idea".

The disciple must become vajradhara ("diamond-bearer"), a title used for Bodhisattva Gautama, whose many-faceted heart was ever merciful in reflecting human sorrow, but whose spiritual essence was like a diamond, unyielding at its core to the subtle disguise of illusion (Maya).

The third of these aims is made possible through the selection of new recruits into the Brotherhood, so that (a) truth may be preserved untarnished by human selfishness; and (b) investigation into the Arcana of nature may go on unhindered, and the results of such examination by generations of trained seers be checked and rechecked, and only then recorded as occult fact for the benefit of humanity.

As far as the labour of the Masters is concerned, the following written by one of their number in 1881 speaks for itself:

If, for generations we have "shut out the world from the Knowledge of our Knowledge," it is on account of its absolute unfitness; and if, notwithstanding proofs given, it still refuses yielding to evidence, then will we at the End of this cycle retire into solitude and our kingdom of silence once more. . . . We have offered to exhume the primeval strata of man's being, his basic nature, and lay bare the wonderful complications of his inner Self -- something never to be achieved by physiology or even psychology in its ultimate expression -- and demonstrate it scientifically. It matters not to them, if the excavations be so deep, the rocks so rough and sharp, that in diving into that, to them, fathomless ocean, most of us perish in the dangerous exploration; for it is we who were the divers and the pioneers and the men of science have but to reap where we have sown. It is our mission to plunge and bring the pearls of Truth to the surface; theirs -- to clean and set them into scientific jewels. And, if they refuse to touch the ill-shapen, oyster-shell, insisting that there is, nor cannot be any precious pearl inside it, then shall we once more wash our hands of any responsibility before human-kind.

Unthanked, unknown, unconsidered, the Masters go on in their compassionate work for mankind's enlightenment, a work that has never ceased in its outpouring of spiritual vitality for many millions of years, to continue another such period if necessity demands, until such time as humanity stirs from its lethargy and once again wills to unite its heart with truth.

For countless generations hath the adept built a fane of imperishable rocks, a giant's Tower of INFINITE THOUGHT, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten superstitious man. And we will go on in that periodical work of ours; we will not allow ourselves to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so firmly built that no amount of opposition and ignorant malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow (Darkness) will be found to prevail.

 

The Closing of the Mystery Schools

Fifteen centuries ago the death knell of the Mysteries in the West sounded when Emperor Theodosius II banished paganism from the Roman Empire, which at that time included Thrace, Macedonia, Crete, Syria, and Egypt. The final blow came less than a century later, in 529 AD, when Emperor Justinian closed the last philosophical school of Athens, the Academy founded by Plato. Aside from the suppression of everything non-Christian, much of what had once been held beautiful and holy in the Mysteries -- the sacred ritual of the union of the aspiring soul with the higher self -- had become orgies of the most degraded sort.

Never in the history of occultism, past or present, can it be said that the Mysteries -- in their purity and spiritual integrity -- cater to the personal and emotional nature. It is precisely to free the soul of limitation, to purify the heart and discipline the mind that the Mystery training is so severe, for in initiation only spiritual strength, only diamond calibre can withstand the searching ordeal.

Birth, growth, maturity, and senescence are the inevitable processes of nature in all her departments. A Mystery school need not undergo a degenerate senescence, any more than a person's declining years need be marked by degradation. But, as with us, the seeds of degeneracy and ambition are too frequently sown in the heyday of material success. Likewise with a genuine Mystery-centre, if the challenge of spiritual growth is not met with ever greater austerity of heart than in days of probation, the venomous seeds of inner decay take root and grow. Degradation replaces quiescence, and the school decays. The spirit of the Brotherhood retreats, the rind of ritual remains.

The real cause, therefore, of the closing of the Mystery schools is the inner faithlessness of the guardians of the temple. Never would the light die out if the hierophants remained loyal to the timeless principles of the school, for the Brotherhood watches with eagle eye for every light, and when the call is strong and the cry for truth powerful, the Mysteries remain pure and true.

When the human race, or any branch of it, or even an individual, makes the spiritual and intellectual appeal in terms so strong, with spiritual energy so vibrant, with the very fibre of the inner life so to say, it actually operates with the spiritual magnetism of a Teacher, and the call is heard in the Great Brotherhood invariably, and an Envoy or Messenger appears in the world as its representative. The Mysteries have always degenerated because men became involved more and more in selfishness and the self-seeking ways of the material world, and lost the inner touch, the inner consciousness of communion with the spiritual Powers mentioned above.

There are two paths in occultism: the right-hand path of white magic and spiritual progress; and the left-hand path of black magic and spiritual retrogression. No third path of cessation or rest exists. If one does not go forwards, then he will remain behind. The stream of evolutionary progress is forwards, toward the light of spirit and truth. If one does not travel this path, he falls by the wayside; the caravan moves on, the idler remains behind.

The further one proceeds on the path of esoteric training, the sharper is the line of demarcation between these two paths; yet, paradoxically, just because of the richer development of the disciple, the finer sensitivity to right and wrong, the greater are the depths sounded as well as the heights attained. The middle line of wisdom becomes ever more elusive as progress in spiritual things is made. It is not the gross pitfalls of former lives that the pupil need guard against, but the subtle refinements of Mara, the "tempter," who with cruel and insidious measure tries the soul relentlessly.

An Eastern proverb says that between the "right and the left hand [magic] there is but a cobweb thread". He who would remain on the path must cling with all his strength and courage to the cobweb thread of wisdom.

One of the most effective weapons of the dark forces is doubt -- doubt of oneself, of one's aspirations and inherent strength. To doubt is a natural reaction of discipleship, but a highly dangerous state while it lasts. If not checked with stern resolve to keep on -- no matter how often one falls or how grave the error -- self-pity obtains mastery and the door to a graver peril is opened: doubt of the teacher, doubt of the school, doubt of the Brotherhood. Here flourishes the fatal seed of interior disarray which, if not cast out from the heart, will grow into the weed of infidelity.

Terrible are the tests of an aspirant to chelaship, and severe have been the warnings to the over-eager. Those who engage themselves in the occult sciences . . . "must either reach the goal or perish. Once fairly started on the way to the great Knowledge, to doubt is to risk insanity; to come to a dead stop is to fall; to recede is to tumble backward, headlong into an abyss."

There are three results of initiation: (a) success; (b) failure which means death; and (c) partial failure which usually means madness. It is for this reason that would-be chelas are repeatedly warned against undue rushing into occultism. Far safer to remain in the outer courts of the temple of wisdom as earnest and sincere aspirants for greater knowledge, as learners striving to practice the age-old rules of the Sanctuary: loyalty, duty, and selfless fidelity to the cause of humanity. If these are cherished and held to through the travail and heartache of human existence, the time will inevitably come when help will be forthcoming, and the aspirant will know that he has been "accepted." Until such time, wiser to live a noble life in the position karma has ordained.

Unwise ardour for spiritual discipline, however, is not half so dangerous as personal desire for occult training merely for self-gain. It was the overweening rush for occult powers which laid the foundation for degeneration of the Mystery schools in the early centuries of our era. For hundreds of years the Mysteries had been slowly losing their sanctity; too many had been received into the preliminary degrees not by virtue of inner development, but for temporal reasons. The rites became perfunctory observances, and perception of interior worth diminished. Dogma, ritual, and priestcraft waxed the spirit of truth and esotericism waned. The few -- all too few indeed -- who had remained faithful to their sacred pledge fled the precincts of the Mysteries which in later Roman times had become so degenerate as actually to repel from their chambers those whose hearts sought only the genuinely esoteric.

The light was withdrawn, but so compassionately does the Brotherhood work that the truths have been preserved in symbol and stone, in allegory and mythos. Egypt, Yucatan Mexico, Stonehenge and many more.

Her sacred Scribes and Hierophants became wanderers upon the face of the earth. Those who had remained in Egypt found themselves obliged for fear of a profanation of the sacred Mysteries to seek refuge in deserts and mountains, to form and establish secret societies and brotherhoods -- such as the Essenes; those who had crossed the oceans to India and even to the (now-called) New World, bound themselves by solemn oaths to keep silent, and to preserve secret their Sacred Knowledge and Science; thus these were buried deeper than ever out of human sight. In Central Asia and on the northern borderlands of India, the triumphant sword of Aristotle's pupil swept away from his path of conquest every vestige of a once pure Religion: and its Adepts receded further and further from that path into the most hidden spots of the globe.

Thus periodically is accomplished the work of the Brothers of the Shadow, the destruction of the outposts of the Mysteries, while the core and heart, the Brotherhood of Light, remains intact. Never will the hand of darkness lay hold upon the heart of esotericism which beats as strongly today as it did some 18 million years ago, and will continue to pulsate in undiminished power till the death of our solar system -- and beyond. The light of truth is the light of the spiritual sun of our universe. As long as its rays gleam down into the world of earth, so long will the rays of spirit warm human hearts.

Fear not; . . . our knowledge will not pass away from the sight of man. It is the "gift of the gods" and the most precious relic of all. The keepers of the sacred Light did not safely cross so many ages but to find themselves wrecked on the rocks of modern scepticism. Our pilots are too experienced sailors to allow us to fear any such disaster. We will always find volunteers to replace the tired sentries, and the world, bad as it is in its present state of transition, can yet furnish us with a few men now and then.

 

The Mystery Schools of Today

The Brotherhood of great ones never deserts humanity. Underneath and behind and within there pulsates the eternal heart of compassion. Withdrawal of the Mystery schools from public knowledge by no means indicates withdrawal of the perennial support of the Mahatmas. Mystery-centres are to be found today all over the world, for "the Secret Association is still alive and as active as ever". Guarded with jealous care by their protectors, the precise location of these schools is undiscoverable except by the worthy; however, a veil of secrecy is not synonymous with non-existence.

Does the physical body remain alive and functional if the heart ceases to pump blood into the circulatory system, if the organs do not receive their vital flow from the heart? Thus with the spiritual body of the earth, whose mystic heart is Sambhala, and from whose ventricles flows forth into organic centres the esoteric life-blood of the Brotherhood. Every Mystery-centre is an organic focus; every human being is a living cell. All owe spiritual allegiance to the central heart. Is it logical to infer that a heart beats in vain? Is it logical to infer that organs function apart from the heart? Such conclusions are against reason or experience.

Three are the distributions, therefore, of this esoteric life-flow:

(1) Through the exoteric and the esoteric Mysteries. The exoteric or Lesser Mysteries are now "largely replaced by the different activities of the Theosophical Movement which itself is exoteric as a Movement''. The esoteric or Greater Mysteries, because of the weight of matter blinding the world- consciousness, are at present far more carefully hid. Significantly, just because of the increased need for light and truth, "the esoteric groups of Mystery- Schools are perhaps more numerous today than they have been for thousands of years, . . .''.

This fact is of far-reaching importance for seekers after truth. Once the power and force of the ancient wisdom seizes the citadel of the heart, one may receive not only genuine spiritual uplift through contact with the exoteric Mysteries but, more importantly, he places himself in direct line of inspiration from the esoteric Mysteries, the seats or organic centres of the Brotherhood.

(2) Through organic foci of national compass. In the circulation of spiritual influences all countries are in magnetic and sympathetic vibration with Sam- bhala. Every great country has its esoteric centres:

Thus a little country like The Netherlands might be the centre of a secret Mystery-School whose ramifications and influence would extend over half of Europe . . . Yet as a matter of fact, every single National unit of the globe, has its own secret spiritual protectors, who as a body form a true esoteric centre. We can call these the Occult Guardians of a people. Thus Britain has hers, Germany has hers, Russia has hers, likewise so with Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, China, India, Japan, the United States, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, etc., etc., etc..

These national occult guardians do not meddle in political affairs; their work is "purely spiritual, moral, intellectual, and wholly benevolent, and indeed universal, and is a silent guide to the intuitive minds of the different races''.

(3) The third channel of esoteric work is one of the most fascinating, yet least recognized: that of preserving the knowledge from age to age.

There are actually groups whose sole business is forming occult centres of Initiation, preparation of students for esoteric work in the world, and for the safeguarding of priceless treasures, the heirlooms of the human race, treasures both intellectual and material.

The generations of seers are not wasteful, nor are the grand systems of philosophy and religion lost in the darkness of receding ages. All that is of essential spiritual value is preserved in the secret archives of the planet:

There are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of thoughtful and solitary students, who pass their lives in obscurity, far from the rumours of the world, studying the great problems of the physical and spiritual universes. They have their secret records in which are preserved the fruits of the scholastic labours of the long line of recluses whose successors they are. The knowledge of their early ancestors, the sages of India, Babylonia, Nineveh, and the imperial Thebes; the legends and traditions commented upon by the masters of Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato, in the marble halls of Heliopolis and Sais; traditions which, in their days, already seemed to hardly glimmer from behind the foggy curtain of the past; -- all this, and much more, is recorded on indestructible parchment, and passed with jealous care from one adept to another.

Some day worthy explorers will recover the lost keys, and mystery after mystery will be solved; temples will be unearthed; secrets of the initiatory chambers revealed; the occult history of the planet and human races unfolded. When? At the appointed hour, an hour not fixed by whim or fancy, but brought into being as the third eye now "most carefully hidden and inaccessible" opens once again in esoteric birth.

According to Purucker, the chief of these hid centres has its home in Sambhala, with branches in Syria, Mexico, Egypt, the United States, and Europe, each one "subordinate to the mother-group of the Occult Hierarchy in Sambhala".

Masters, though vastly superior to us, are still human beings -- grandly human, but human nevertheless -- and must undergo further testing, but such initiations are of supernal character. Of the trial of his co-worker.

Two days later when his "retreat" was decided upon in parting he asked me: "Will you watch over my work, will you see it falls not into ruins?" I promised. What is there I would not have promised him at that hour! At a certain spot not to be mentioned to outsiders, there is a chasm spanned by a frail bridge of woven grasses and with a raging torrent beneath. The bravest member of your Alpine clubs would scarcely dare to venture the passage, for it hangs like a spider's web and seems to be rotten and impassable. Yet it is not; and he who dares the trial and succeeds -- as he will if it is right that he should be permitted -- comes into a gorge of surpassing beauty of scenery -- to one of our places and to some of our people, of which and whom there is no note or minute among European geographers. At a stone's throw from the old Lamasery stands the old tower, within whose bosom have gestated generations of Bodhisatwas. It is there, where now rests your lifeless friend.

There within the Sanctuary are "gestated generations of Bodhisattvas," among whose esoteric purposes are the enlightenment of humanity. Through all the heartache and sorrow of the world, this strong network of occult vitality flows in unceasing rhythm along the invisible arteries and veins of the body spiritual of our earth. So profound is the compassion of the Brotherhood, so untiring its labour that not until the heartbeat of every human being shall pulsate in harmony with the heartbeat of the Great Brotherhood will it lay down its task.

 

 

I run a Mystery school in the Mayan Jungle where we not only teach the lesser mysteries but the greater ones also.

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