Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00079)

ISIS002.TXT (Isis Unveiled, 1877)

BEFORE THE VEIL.

Joan. - Advance our waving colors on the walls! -King Henry VI.
Act IV.

"My life has been devoted to the study of man, his destiny and
his happiness." - J. R. BUCHANAN, M.D., Outlines of Lectures on
Anthropology.

IT is nineteen centuries since, as we are told, the night of
Heathenism and Paganism was first dispelled by the divine light
of Christianity.  and two-and-a-half centuries since the bright
lamp of Modern Science began to shine on the darkness of the
ignorance of the ages. Within these respective epochs, we are
required to believe, the true moral and intellectual progress of
the race has occurred. The ancient philosophers were well enough
for their respective generations, but they were illiterate as
compared with modern men of science. The ethics of Paganism
perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people of antiquity,
but not until the advent of the luminous "Star of Bethlehem,"
was the true road to moral perfection and the way to salvation
made plain. Of old, brutishness was the rule, virtue and
spirituality the exception. Now, the dullest may read the will o
f God in His revealed word; men have every incentive to be good,
and are constantly becoming better.

This is the assumption; what are the facts ? On the one hand an
unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy, a host of
sects, and three warring great religions; discord instead of
union, dogmas without proofs, sensation-loving preachers, and
wealth and pleasure-seeking parishioners, hypocrisy and bigotry,
begotten by the tyrannical exigencies of respectability, the
rule of the day, sincerity and real piety exceptional.  On the
other hand, scientific hypotheses built on sand; no accord upon
a single question; rancorous quarrels and jealousy; a general
drift into materialism.  A death-grapple of Science with
Theology for infallibility - "a conflict of ages."

At Rome, the self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative
successor to the chair of Peter is undermining social order
with his invisible but omnipresent network of bigoted agents,
and incites them to revolutionize Europe for his temporal as
well as spiritual supremacy. We see him who calls himself the
"Vicar of Christ," fraternizing with the anti-Christian Moslem
against another Christian nation, publicly invoking the blessing
of God upon the arms of those who have for centuries withstood,
with fire and sword, the pretensions of his Christ to Godhood!
At Berlin - one of the great seats of learning - professors of
modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the boasted
results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are
quietly snuffing out the candle of the great Florentine;
seeking, in short, to prove the heliocentric system, and even
the earth's rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists,
Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers but
clever calculators of unverifiable problems.  [See the last
chapter of this volume].

Between these two conflicting Titans - Science and Theology - is
a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man's personal
immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to
the level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the
hour, illumined by the bright noon-day sun of this Christian
and scientific era!

Would it be strict justice to condemn to critical lapidation the
most humble and modest of authors for entirely rejecting the
authority of both these combatants? Are we not bound rather to
take as the true aphorism of this century, the declaration of
Horace Greeley. "I accept unreservedly the views of no man,
living or dead"? ["Recollections of a Busy Life," p. 147.]
Such, at all events, will be our motto, and we mean that
principle to be our constant guide throughout this work.

Among the many phenomenal outgrowths of our century, the strange
creed of the so-called Spiritualists has arisen amid the
tottering ruins of self-styled revealed religions and
materialistic philosophies; and yet it alone offers a possible
last refuge of compromise between the two. That this unexpected
ghost of pre-Christian days finds poor welcome from our sober
and positive century, is not surprising. Times have strangely
changed; and it is but recently that a well-known Brooklyn
preacher pointedly remarked in a sermon, that could Jesus come
back and behave in the streets of New York, as he did in those
of Jerusalem, he would find himself confined in the prison of
the Tombs. [Henry Ward Beecher.] What sort of welcome, then,
could Spiritualism ever expect? True enough, the weird stranger
seems neither attractive nor promising at first sight. Shapeless
and uncouth, like an infant attended by seven nurses, it is
coming out of its teens lame and mutilated. The name of its
enemies is legion; its friends and protectors are a handful. But
what of that? When was ever truth accepted a priori? Because the
champions of Spiritualism have in their fanaticism magnified its
qualities, and remained blind to its imperfections, that gives
no excuse to doubt its reality. A forgery is impossible when we
have no model to forge after. The fanaticism of Spiritualists is
itself a proof of the genuineness and possibility of their
phenomena. They give us facts that we may investigate, not
assertions that we must believe without proof. Millions of
reasonable men and women do not so easily succumb to collective
hallucination. And so, while the clergy, following their own
interpretations of the Bible, and science its self-made Codex of
possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, real science
and true religion are silent, and gravely wait further
developments.

The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct
comprehension of old philosophies. Whither, then, should we
turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on the
pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the
modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and
religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the
broad conception of these twin truths - so strong in their
unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in
comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance;
this improved modern theology with the "Secret doctrines" of the
ancient universal religion.  Perhaps we may thus discover a
neutral ground whence we can reach and profit by both.

It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the
abstruse systems of old India, that can alone afford us this
middle ground.  Although twenty-two and a quarter centuries have
elapsed since the death of Plato, the great minds of the world
are still occupied with his writings. He was, in the fullest
sense of the word, the world's interpreter.  And the greatest
philosopher of the pre-Christian era mirrored faithfully in his
works the spiritualism of the Vedic philosophers who lived
thousands of years before himself, and its metaphysical
expression. Vyasa, Djeminy, Kapila, Vrihaspati, Sumati, and so
many others, will be found to have transmitted their indelible
imprint through the intervening centuries upon Plato and his
school. Thus is warranted the inference that to Plato and the
ancient Hindu sages was alike revealed the same wisdom.  So
surviving the shock of time, what can this wisdom be but divine
and eternal?

Plato taught justice as subsisting in the soul of its possessor
and his greatest good. "Men, in proportion to their intellect,
have admitted his transcendent claims." Yet his commentators,
almost with one consent, shrink from every passage which implies
that his metaphysics are based on a solid foundation, and not on
ideal conceptions.

But Plato could not accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual
aspirations; the two were at one with him. For the old Grecian
sage there was a single object of attainment: REAL KNOWLEDGE. He
considered those only to be genuine philosophers, or students of
truth, who possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in
opposition to the mere seeing; of the always-existing, in
opposition to the transitory. and of that which exists
permanently, in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is
developed and destroyed alternately. "Beyond all finite
existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and
principles, there is an INTELLIGENCE or MIND [nous, the spirit],
the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which
all other ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the
universe; the ultimate substance from which all things derive
their being and essence, the first and efficient Cause of all
the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and
goodness, which pervades the universe - who is called, by way of
preeminence and excellence, the Supreme Good, the God (a Theos)
'the God over all' (a epi pasi Theos)." [* Cocker: "Christianity
and Greek Philosophy," xi., p. 377.] He is not the truth nor the
intelligence, but "the father of it." Though this eternal
essence of things may not be perceptible by our physical senses,
it may be apprehended by the mind of those who are not wilfully
obtuse. "To you," said Jesus to his elect disciples, "it is
given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to them
[the polloi] it is not given; . . . therefore speak I to them in
parables [or allegories]; because they seeing, see not, and
hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand." [Gospel
according to Matthew, xiii. 11, 13.]

The philosophy of Plato, we are assured by Porphyry, of the
Neo-platonic School, was taught and illustrated in the MYSTERIES.
Many have questioned and even denied this; and Lobeck, in his
Aglaophomus, has gone to the extreme of representing the sacred
orgies as little more than an empty show to captivate the
imagination. As though Athens and Greece would for twenty
centuries and more have repaired every fifth year to Eleusis to
witness a solemn religious farce!  Augustine, the papa-bishop of
Hippo, has resolved such assertions. He declares that the
doctrines of the Alexandrian Platonists were the original
esoteric doctrines of the first followers of Plato, and
describes Plotinus as a Plato resuscitated. He also explains the
motives of the great philosopher for veiling the interior sense
of what he taught.

["The accusations of atheism, the introducing of foreign deities,
and corrupting of the Athenian youth, which were made against
Socrates, afforded ample justification for Plato to conceal the
arcane preaching of his doctrines. Doubtless the peculiar
diction or 'jargon' of the alchemists was employed for a like
purpose. The dungeon, the rack, and the fagot were employed
without scruple by Christians of every shade, the Roman
Catholics especially, against all who taught even natural
science contrary to the theories entertained by the Church. Pope
Gregory the Great even inhibited the grammatical use of Latin as
heathenish. The offense of Socrates consisted in unfolding to
his disciples the arcane doctrine concerning the gods, which was
taught in the Mysteries and was a capital crime. He also was
charged by Aristophanes with introducing the new god Dinos into
the republic as the demiurgos or artificer, and the lord of the
solar universe. The Heliocentric system was also a doctrine of
the Mysteries; and hence, when Aristarchus the Pythagorean
taught it openly, Cleanthes declared that the Greeks ought to
have called him to account and condemned him for blasphemy
against the gods," - ("Plutarch"). But Socrates had never been
initiated, and hence divulged nothing which had ever been
imparted to him.]


As to the myths, Plato declares in the Gorgias and the Phaedon
that they were the vehicles of great truths well worth the
seeking. But commentators are so little en rapport with the
great philosopher as to be compelled to acknowledge that they
are ignorant where "the doctrinal ends, and the mythical
begins." Plato put to flight the popular superstition concerning
magic and daemons, and developed the exaggerated notions of the
time into rational theories and metaphysical conceptions.
Perhaps these would not quite stand the inductive method of
reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless they are
satisfactory in the highest degree to those who apprehend the
existence of that higher faculty of insight or intuition, as
affording a criterion for ascertaining truth.

Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind,
Plato taught that the nous, spirit, or rational soul of man,
being "generated by the Divine Father," possessed a nature
kindred, or even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was capable
of beholding the eternal realities. This faculty of
contemplating reality in a direct and immediate manner belongs
to God alone; the aspiration for this knowledge constitutes what
is really meant by philosophy - the love of wisdom. The love of
truth is inherently the love of good; and so predominating over
every desire of the soul, purifying it and assimilating it to
the divine, thus governing every act of the individual, it
raises man to a participation and communion with Divinity, and
restores him to the likeness of God.  "This flight," says Plato
in the Theaetetus, "consists in becoming like God, and this
assimilation is the becoming just and holy with wisdom."

The basis of this assimilation is always asserted to be the
pre-existence of the spirit or nous. In the allegory of the
chariot and winged steeds, given in the Phaedrus, he represents
the psychical nature as composite and two-fold; the thumos, or
epithumetic part, formed from the substances of the world of
phenomena; and the thumoeides, the essence of which is linked to
the eternal world. The present earth-life is a fall and
punishment. The soul dwells in "the grave which we call the
body," and in its incorporate state, and previous to the
discipline of education, the noetic or spiritual element is
"asleep." Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like the
captives in the subterranean cave, described in The Republic,
the back is turned to the light, we perceive only the shadows of
objects, and think them the actual realities. Is not this the
idea of Maya, or the illusion of the senses in physical life,
which is so marked a feature in Buddhistical philosophy? But
these shadows, if we have not given ourselves up absolutely to
the sensuous nature, arouse in us the reminiscence of that
higher world that we once inhabited.  "The interior spirit has
some dim and shadowy recollection of its ante-natal state of
bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its
return." It is the province of the discipline of philosophy to
disinthrall it from the bondage of sense, and raise it into the
empyrean of pure thought, to the vision of eternal truth,
goodness, and beauty. "The soul," says Plato, in the Theaetetus,
"cannot come into the form of a man if it has never seen the
truth. This is a recollection of those things which. our soul
formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising the things
which we now say are, and looking up to that which REALLY IS.
Wherefore the nous, or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of
the higher truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to
the best of his ability, keeps these things in mind, of which
the contemplation renders even Deity itself divine. By making
the right use of these things remembered from the former life,
by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man
becomes truly perfect - an initiate into the diviner wisdom."

Hence we may understand why the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries
were always in the night. The life of the interior spirit is
the death of the external nature; and the night of the physical
world denotes the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun,
is, therefore, worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the
Mysteries were symbolized the pre-existent condition of the
spirit and soul, and the lapse of the latter into earth-life and
Hades, the miseries of that life, the purification of the soul,
and its restoration to divine bliss, or reunion with spirit.
Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the philosophical discipline to
the mystic rites: "Philosophy"' says he, "may be called the
initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction in the
genuine Mysteries. There are five parts of this initiation: I.,
the previous purification; II., the admission to participation
in the arcane rites; III., the epoptic revelation; IV the
investiture or enthroning; V. the fifth, which is produced from
all these, is friendship and interior communion with God, and
the enjoyment of that felicity which arises from intimate
converse with divine beings. . . .

Plato denominates the epopteia, or personal view, the perfect
contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively,
absolute truths and ideas. He also considers the binding of the
head and crowning as analogous to the authority which any one
receives from his instructors, of leading others into the same
contemplation. The fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity
arising from hence, and, according to Plato, an assimilation to
divinity as far as is possible to human beings." [See Thomas
Taylor. "Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," p. 47. New York: J.
W. Bouton, 1875.] Such is Platonism. "Out of Plato," says Ralph
Waldo Emerson, "come all things that are still written and
debated among men of thought." He absorbed the learning of his
times - of Greece from Philolaus to Socrates; then of Pythagoras
in Italy. then what he could procure from Egypt and the East. He
was so broad that all philosophy, European and Asiatic, was in
his doctrines; and to culture and contemplation he added the
nature and qualities of the poet.

The followers of Plato generally adhered strictly to his
psychological theories. Several, however, like Xenocrates,
ventured into bolder speculations.  Speusippus, the nephew and
successor of the great philosopher, was the author of the
Numerical Analysis, a treatise on the Pythagorean numbers. Some
of his speculations are not found in the written Dialogues; but
as he was a listener to the unwritten lectures of Plato, the
judgment of Enfield is doubtless correct, that he did not differ
from his master. He was evidently, though not named, the
antagonist whom Aristotle criticised, when professing to cite
the argument of Plato against the doctrine of Pythagoras, that
all things were in themselves numbers, or rather, inseparable
from the idea of numbers. He especially endeavored to show that
the Platonic doctrine of ideas differed essentially from the
Pythagorean, in that it presupposed numbers and magnitudes to
exist apart from things. He also asserted that Plato taught that
there could be no real knowledge, if the object of that
knowledge was not carried beyond or above the sensible.

But Aristotle was no trustworthy witness. He misrepresented
Plato, and he almost caricatured the doctrines of Pythagoras.
There is a canon of interpretation, which should guide us in our
examinations of every philosophical opinion: "The human mind
has, under the necessary operation of its own laws, been
compelled to entertain the same fundamental ideas, and the human
heart to cherish the same feelings in all ages." It is certain
that Pythagoras awakened the deepest intellectual sympathy of
his age, and that his doctrines exerted a powerful influence
upon the mind of Plato. His cardinal idea was that there
existed a permanent principle of unity beneath the forms,
changes, and other phenomena of the universe. Aristotle asserted
that he taught that "numbers are the first principles of all
entities." Ritter has expressed the opinion that the formula of
Pythagoras should be taken symbolically, which is doubtless
correct. Aristotle goes on to associate these numbers with the
"forms" and "ideas" of Plato. He even declares that Plato said:
"forms are numbers," and that "ideas are substantial existences
- real beings." Yet Plato did not so teach. He declared that the
final cause was the Supreme Goodness - to agathon. "Ideas are
objects of pure conception for the human reason, and they are
attributes of the Divine Reason." [Cousin: "History of
Philosophy"' I., ix] Nor did he ever say that "forms are
numbers." What he did say may be found in the Timaeus: "God
formed things as they first arose according to forms and
numbers."

It is recognized by modern science that all the higher laws of
nature assume the form of quantitative statement. This is
perhaps a fuller elaboration or more explicit affirmation of the
Pythagorean doctrine.  Numbers were regarded as the best
representations of the laws of harmony which pervade the cosmos.
We know too that in chemistry the doctrine of atoms and the laws
of combination are actually and, as it were, arbitrarily defined
by numbers. As Mr. W. Archer Butler has expressed it: "The world
is, then, through all its departments, a living arithmetic in
its development, a realized geometry in its repose."

The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the general formula of
unity in multiplicity, the one evolving the many and pervading
the many.  This is the ancient doctrine of emanation in few
words. Even the apostle Paul accepted it as true.  "Out of him
and through him and in him all things are." This, as we can see
by the following quotation, is purely Hindu and Brahmanical:

"When the dissolution - Pralaya - had arrived at its term, the
great Being - Para-Atma or Para-Purusha - the Lord existing
through himself, out of whom and through whom all things were,
and are and will be . . . resolved to emanate from his own
substance the various creatures" (Manava-Dharma-Sastra, book i.,
slokas 6 and 7).

The mystic Decad 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 is a way of expressing this
idea. The One is God, the Two, matter. the Three, combining
Monad and Duad, and partaking of the nature of both, is the
phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses
the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the
entire cosmos. The universe is the combination of a thousand
elements, and yet the expression of a single spirit - a chaos to
the sense, a cosmos to the reason.

(to be continued ...)
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