By Ursula Seiler
"I think, therefore I am". Famous though this statement by French
thinker René Descartes may be - it is nevertheless fundamentally
unsound. 
For
the capacity of thinking is a relatively recent achievement
of human evolution. Millions of years ago human beings were
linked more inwardly with the divine precisely because their
intellect still slumbered in the depths of a dream consciousness.
Like sorcerer's apprentices, they still handle the very quality
that constituted proof of existence for Descartes and distinguishes
human beings irrevocably from animals, plants and minerals according
to the motto "...they know not what they do". Surely we have
witnessed the most powerful proofs of the destructive power
of all-too-human thinking ever more frequently and painfully
in recent years. They appear as earthquakes, floods, volcanic
eruptions, droughts and tornadoes. Natural catastrophes are
a direct consequence of misguided human thinking, and instead
of wallowing in self pity every time we bewail the victims of
such a catastrophe, it would be wiser and more mature of us
to reflect for once about what man is doing wrong to make nature
burst its banks so grievously.
The seed of thinking germinates
As already mentioned, the seed of thinking slumbered in early
prehistoric man over vast periods of time without awakening.
Then suddenly, at the time of old Atlantis, the waking call
sounded. Prior to that, man had been purely a being of desires
and feelings (having lost his state of original innocence and
purity through the "Fall of Man"). But now the hand of the world
clock showed that the time had come for him to start worrying
his head about being and non-being, cause and effect, meaning
and purpose - and thus to move from inchoate fragments of knowledge
to ultimately recognizing and learning to use the great mysteries
of the creative laws of the cosmos.
Like so many experiments, this one also failed miserably to
begin with. Max Heindel tells us in his book The Rosicrucian
world view, how this seed of thinking was called to life
in the era of the Old Semites (who represented the fifth life-wave
of the Atlantean epoch). However, the divine nature in the human
being was still extremely weak at that time, while his desires
were all the stronger, so the germinal intellect (contrary to
the divine plan) became linked to the body of sensation, "which",
says Heindel, "produced the quality of cunning , which
in turn became the underlying cause of all evil in the middle
third of the Atlantean epoch." At the time of its destruction,
Atlantean society had succumbed to an avaricious materialism.
Heindel explains that: "The Old Semites were able to control
their desires to some extent with their intellect. Cunning took
the place of mere desire, and they tried to use it to realize
their selfish aims. Although they were a turbulent race, they
learnt to control their passions to a great degree and to attain
their purposes by means of cunning, which is more refined and
effective than brute force. They were the first to discover
that brain is superior to brawn."
But the newly awoken capacity of thinking demanded its tribute.
Man lost his power over the forces of nature. His innocent forebears
who dwelt in a long past Golden Age could see angels and nature
spirits and lived with them in a spirit of fraternity, and their
successors could still wield powerful forces. The monumental
buildings which amaze us today as prehistoric marvels bear witness
to the fact that early man knew the secret of dematerialization
and levitation. There is no other way of explaining how the
pyramids or ancient cult centers like Stonehenge came to be
built. But now that he was granted the magic wand of the intellect
- a spiritual force that could conceive of heaven - but also
hell - the old power over matter was taken from him, and his
third eye was closed, shutting him off from direct vision of
the worlds of fine matter. Thank God, we sigh with relief. His
unbounded godless intellect hand in hand with immeasurable power
over the forces of nature and matter would otherwise have put
an end to life on earth long ago. When man learns to be master
of his thoughts and feelings, and to use them only in a constructive
sense, he will regain these forces - and nothing will stand
in the way of creating a 'paradise on earth'.
The stages of education of
humanity
It is important to be aware that man is by no means a fixed
ready-made product. Thus we currently see human beings on earth
of very diverse types - the aboriginal inhabitants of Papua-New
Guinea with their highly archaic lifestyle, or Australian Aborigines,
as well as the North Americans with their focus on the intellect
and all the stages between these two extremes. In the same way,
humanity as a whole has changed fundamentally in the course
of the ages: contemporary man by no means represents the "crown
of creation". For man of the future will possess not only developed
instincts and a highly trained intellect, but also unfailing
intuition and a well-endowed capacity for inspiration. He will
regain his clairvoyant faculties and look back on the human
beings of the 21st century much as a contemporary American academic
might regard a member of a Pygmy tribe. But with one big difference,
for contemporary Pygmies are gifted with an innocence and an
intimate connection with nature completely unknown to the oh-so-cultivated
'elite' of our contemporary civilization. Rosicrucian Max Heindel
names four phases of the 'education' of the human race:
-
Human beings are influenced from outside
without being aware of it (Hyperborean and Lemurian epochs).
-
They are placed under the guidance of
divine messengers and kings (often originating from Venus),
whom they can see and whose commands they must obey. (Atlantean
epoch).
-
They are taught to follow the commands
of a God whom they cannot see. (The last twelve thousand years,
i.e. the post-Atlantean epoch.)
-
Finally, they learn to raise themselves
above these commands by embodying the law and overcoming themselves
out of their own free will by living in harmony with the laws
of nature, which are the laws of God (our future, which is
now in its germinal beginnings).
This process is associated with the four stages of man's worship
of God. In the very beginning:
-
He worships God, whom he begins to sense,
out of fear. He offers Him sacrifices like a fetish-worshipper
in order to reconcile this malevolent, vengeful God who is
to be feared.
-
He learns to recognize God as the giver
of all things and hopes to gain material benefits from Him
in the here and now. He performs sacrifices out of avarice
and expects that the Lord will reward him a hundred-fold.
And also hopes to escape His punishments by the agency of
plagues, war etc.
-
He learns to worship God through prayer
and by leading a good life. He nurtures a belief in a heaven
in which he will be rewarded in the future. He must refrain
from evil in order to escape future punishment in hell.
-
Finally, he reaches a point at which he
can do good without any thought of reward, bribery or punishment.
He now does what is good simply because he feels it's the
right thing to do.
Heindel continues: "The primeval Semites had attained the
second stage, and Christianity the third stage. The esoteric
Christians and pupils of all occult schools now endeavor to
reach the highest level, the fourth stage. As Heindel says:
"Then the uniting Christian religion will open the hearts
of men just as their understanding is now being opened."
Attainment of this stage is linked directly to knowledge.
By thinking, man does not act simply because he is commanded
to do so and cannot do otherwise, but because he has gained
wide freedom of choice. By practicing it, he has learnt to
distinguish between good and evil, to separate the chaff from
the wheat - and has decided to become wheat.
(…)
Descartes and the Fata Morgana
Every deed is the child of a thought. A thought is the crystallization
of the will impulse, which is the arrow bearing a desire to
reality. In the beginning was the spirit, and this created
the entire universe by means of thought, of the primal word:
"Let there be light".
Thoughts are a fundamental power of creation. Everything that
a human being can conceive of can also be realized - sometime,
somewhere. The human being becomes what he desires - but as
he lets his thoughts run wild, he is rarely happy with the
result. Because he has softened his will and has become lost
in the jungle of his desires, he ends up in chaos and complains
bitterly about the apparent lack of a way out of his fate.
But that's the whole point - where there's no will there's
no way either, but merely a labyrinth.
Let's return to Descartes. Even now, 350 years after writing
his famous "I think, therefore I am", this statement continues
to wreak havoc. Descartes had struggled his way to this oasis
after almost perishing in the desert of doubt: "I think, therefore
I am", "I doubt, therefore I am", "I am deceived, therefore
I am". But the "oasis" which saves the philosopher from his
desperation turns out upon closer inspection to be a Fata
Morgana, an illusion. Indeed, no less than the second expulsion
from Eden.
After all, medieval man still found his ultimate certainty,
the answer to his torturous questions, in God. After Descartes,
he had to find the answers in himself. The heavenward gaze
of faith had become a doubting earthward gaze; and Descartes
was aware that this gaze would lead to men sinking in the
night of skepticism. He even described himself toward the
end of his life as "a human being who walks alone and in darkness".
Descartes' credo marks the beginning of the triumph of the
human intellect. Bleak and increasingly merciless, it sweeps
over the land, drives out heart and feelings and breeds its
infamous brood - utilitarian thinking and expediency. It swells
the head and applies a tourniquet to the heart until nihilism
and widespread cynicism determine the development of humanity.
The heart, the soul and the feelings ultimately become nothing
but yellowing recollections in a personal poetry album relegated
to granny's attic. After all, aren't we enlightened! (Which
is perhaps why more and more things are going awry today.)
And now that we have learnt to shudder so properly in the
face of the steely smooth ice-cold materialism into which
we have, like moles, buried ourselves, the call is becoming
increasingly impossible to ignore. The 'voice of the silence'
begins to stir and insists on being heard, rebelling inwardly
against the noisy thoughts flooding the world. Suddenly we
become so weary of all this noise that all we want is to switch
off. Away, only away!
And on that day on which we, breathless and exhausted, consciously
read a wonderful and edifying book, without murder and killing
and sex and lies, on that day we have won a small but significant
victory. We have made our first conscious effort of will toward
wanting to live in heaven rather than in hell. For thoughts
are things. Omraam Michael Aivanhov says on this score: "Every
thought is an individual that tries to live as long as possible.
All similar thoughts combine and strengthen each other." Ever
since man has lived on the earth, he has created mighty thought
beings by his incessant streams of thought, which swirl around
the earth (they remain earthbound and may not leave the terrestrial
sphere, the rest of the universe being keen to avoid our mental
garbage!). And man is quite simply the transmitter who aligns
his aerial either to 'heaven' or 'hell'. For like attracts
like. If he gives himself up to dark thoughts, he immediately
becomes caught up in the mire of the same murky thought mass
that fills the ether. He sinks in it to the point of drowning,
a condition known today as depression. If he makes the effort
to block out the gloomy thoughts and to devote his attention
to beautiful, noble and good things, he picks up heavenly
thought forces borne by angels. If he does this often enough,
his thought channel may become so refined that he becomes
capable of receiving heavenly inspiration. For most of the
original ideas which man espouses have not grown on his dung
heap. They are suggested to him, stream to him, 'occur' to
him, as common speech so aptly says. They come from an angel
of thought, whose number is legion. Or else he has tapped
into an ancient primeval thought form that has existed in
the ether for centuries or millennia or even much longer,
brought forth by long gone civilizations and waiting to be
rediscovered by a human being. After all, as the proverb says:
"There's nothing new under the sun".
(…)
The right and left brain
hemispheres
Human beings have two quite distinct brain hemispheres. The
left one is a super-fast computer, an analytical signal converter.
In a jiffy, it absorbs the impressions it receives and, lo
and behold, analyses them into a usable form. Let's be clear
on this point - the brain does not generate thoughts, it merely
picks them up. Thoughts consist of etheric substance. The
brain is the first converter on the path to matter. It is
followed by the feelings, the will to action and finally the
concrete action itself. In this way, the abstract idea becomes
a physical reality. The right brain hemisphere is more dream-like.
It receives images, creative thoughts, ideas. It is - would
be! - the recipient of divine inspirations, be this one's
own divine presence, an angel or a master - or simply a very
lofty divine thought form that seeks a channel in order to
be known: hello, humanity, don't I represent a solution to
your problems?! That's why all prophets and seers receive
their revelations in images. Often, these are mere metaphors
for processes of consciousness. So a vision of the end of
the world need not necessarily mean that continents will sink
beneath the waves and the heavens will be physically darkened,
but that perhaps an earlier world of belief disappears to
give way to new knowledge.
As we go through the streets we should really be amazed that
most people don't walk around with their heads tilted to the
left. Our brains have become so strongly left-leaning: fixed
entirely on rationality, the physical reality, everyday matters.
Oriented unremittingly to external impressions, never turning
inwards. Quite apart from that, the average human being has
become so identified with his physical body that his brain
has become the master of his thoughts. Like in an automaton,
his five senses continually feed impressions to his left brain
hemisphere (which is absolutely right). However, as they are
the only type of thoughts which get through to him, only the
left brain half is used, and he ultimately considers every
thought from an exclusively physical standpoint. His right
brain, open to the higher worlds, atrophies, becomes deaf
as a post. There comes a time when it no longer has any antennae
which might even conceive of metaphysical truths. That's why
human beings who are strongly bound to material life (including
many conventional scientists) often have no wish to know anything
about higher things: their organ of perception for higher
realms has become stunted and unusable due to lack of use
over many years, decades or perhaps even lifetimes. And just
as a badly injured person needs a long period of recuperation
and retraining to re-use certain muscles again, such a 'one-sided'
person can tolerate metaphysical reality only in homeopathic
doses.
Hearing the voice of the
silence
Meditation can prove valuable in balancing the two cerebral
hemispheres. By sitting in silence and concentrating on a
mantra or on our bodily processes, we switch the left half
of the brain off sufficiently to allow the right hemisphere
to gradually 'talk' to us. Hence the wonderful impressions
and experiences often received by those practiced in meditation.
The control of thoughts depends fundamentally on slowing down
the activity of our left brain for long enough to perceive
the still, quiet spiritual voice previously completely drowned
in the cacophony of external noise. Hence the proverb "silence
is golden". Only in silence can the golden 'treasure' of enlightenment,
which comes from inner thinking, be real-ized! Often, however,
our brain is like a busy amusement park, full of sensation
and pleasure seekers roaming about in search of sensuous or
other adventure. "Thou shalt not let thy senses make a playground
of thy mind", wrote Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in her book
The voice of the silence. To tame one's own rampant thoughts
and whip them energetically back into line every time they
threaten to degrade into any form of impurity is a long and
often Sysiphus-like task awaiting all those who set out on
the 'path'. Every impure thought must be rejected immediately.
However, it is most important not always to suspect evil behind
everything and play Sherlock Holmes with our thoughts. So
don't wake any sleeping dogs but pass them quietly by, keeping
your gaze fixed on the sun in the sky. Of course we should
not go through the world in ignorance and without becoming
involved; by no means. But how often do we mull over some
event or behavior, zealously trying once again to find out
what lies behind it and ultimately causes us pain? Right thinking
will eventually turn our passions into joys.
(…)
There
is still much more to read in this 9-page treatise. You will
find the whole text in our first English issue. For more details
click here.
© 2005
ZeitenSchrift