Down the ages, myths and legends have hinted at a great mystery. This is the existence of an Ancient Wisdom, hard to find, but offering great reward to the successful seeker. In modern times the situation is similar, except that the hints have swollen to a library of books about this Ancient Wisdom and guides towards seeking it. But for most people it still remains secret.
To discover why this is so we may well consider the book of a modern seeker, Geoffrey Ashe. His book is called The Ancient Wisdom: A Quest for the Source of Mystic Knowledge. Since Ashe is a skeptical, logical, literal individual, his quest started by questioning even the existence of an Ancient Wisdom. He sought evidence in myths and books. He brushes aside much of H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine because it is (in his words) 'a huge, shapeless amateurish book, often obscure', though it has features which inspire respect'. In the course of some 150 pages, Ashe manages to convince himself that there really is something to discover. He examines the significance of the number seven in myths and scriptures, and he locates the source of this 'magic seven' in the mythical Shamballa, some-where in Central Asia. He even offers two UFO events to support this conclusion, presenting a disproved theory with regard to one. However, he gives no real clue as to the nature of the Ancient Wisdom. So despite a long and scholarly investigation, Ashe never did find whatever it was that he was seeking nor how it arose, beyond establishing its reality and its original geographical location.
The Ancient Wisdom never will be discovered by any such logical approach. To the hard and the hard-headed, who prize the rational mind as the ultimate achievement of human evolution, it must remain forever secret. It can only be apprehended by those able to transcend personal emotions and thought processes, by those who are graced by intuition and mystical experience. As the author of this present book puts it: '... a search for the deeper wisdom must go hand in hand with a wholesome, ethical life. This kind of understanding cannot be won only on an intellectual level. It must involve the whole person at all levels of his being.'
It may be said with some truth that the Ancient Wisdom was revealed in the Mystery Schools of antiquity. But what was taught was only the ways to prepare oneself to receive such grace, by self-purification, control of mind and emotions, and meditation. Such personal instruction has probably been available through the ages in secret societies, even during the Dark Ages. During this century, personal guidance has been offered to members of the Theosophical Society and more recently through many other bodies. For those prepared to work alone, guidance is now freely available through books on yoga. Exoterically, the Ancient Wisdom is a body of arcane knowledge that may now be studied by any who are interested.
Since 1888 when H. P. Blavatsky's fountain source of esoteric philosophy, The Secret Doctrine, burst upon the learned world, any number of books on various aspects of its doctrines have appeared. There are deep and difficult expositions as well as simple ones easy to understand. Some are worked out logically and clearly and appeal to the rational mind, while some are more poetic and symbolic and appeal to the intuition. Amid this wealth of theosophical and esoteric literature, what can another book on theosophy contribute?
There are two considerations I feel need more emphasis, points which have appeared in other books but which to me have not been made sufficiently clear as important to our under-standing of theosophy in the twentieth century. First, I think theosophical ideas can be connected more broadly with developments in contemporary thought and thus shown to be highly relevant in today's world.
Second, I wish to convey my conviction that these ideas, abstract though they may at first appear, are realities in nature and in ourselves that we can come to experience first-hand, at least in part.
As a student of theosophy for well over five decades, I have seen the thought of the world open more and more to ideas of the perennial philosophy. It seems that in every field alongside continuing materialism can be found strains of the Ancient Wisdom, from business to animal welfare, from medicine to rituals, but especially in science. A kind of spiritualization appears to be infusing modern thought. This trend is still in the forefront of today's culture, certainly not yet accepted by the majority. However, in a time when words like holism and karma have become part of ordinary speech, when scientists are juxtaposing physics and mysticism, when millions practise meditation, I cannot help being impressed at how pervasive certain ancient ideas have become.
It has not been easy to assimilate these newer trends into theosophical literature. There have been few writers who have perceived and articulated the age-old principles appearing in new guise. For, as F. L. Kunz made clear in the 1940s and 1950s, it is with the principles of theosophy, the sweeping metaphysical ideas, that juncture can be made with modern thought, not so easily with the details and specifics. Some such linkages have appeared but more often in articles and seminars than in books.
Therefore, I have organized this book around some major themes, overarching concepts, that keep reappearing, particularly in The Secret Doctrine. I have tried to explain these grand ideas and where possible to back them up with modern know-ledge, especially science. Though the principles themselves are not dependent on any new developments and stand as eternal truths to those who know, it is still helpful to observe them where they coincide with modern thought.
There comes a time for most of us when we begin to question the value of our lives, of our activities and achievements, even of ourselves. This may be a momentary quavering which we brush aside as merely a pessimistic mood, or it may be a prolonged and serious examination. But if we take the time to step aside from our lives and our habitual thoughts and feelings and look at them objectively, most of us will feel some dissatisfaction, that something is missing, that there must be more than this. Such unsettling moments of questioning often give birth to a 'divine discontent,' a hunger for something more, that gives us the impetus to discover new dimensions to life. Uncertainty, even despair, can shake us into a new mode, a new way, a search for meaning. Einstein sensed something of this as he glimpsed the immensity of the universe.
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