Category Archives: Zen

“Manly P Hall | Ancient of Days; Nature of the Godhead”

“53 Aufrufe05.12.2021
enlightenment – استنارة
554 Abonnenten”

“of course to the devout transcendentalist or metaphysician there is no problem at all,
all these things are handled by invisible forces beyond human comprehension,
uh, we do not deny such a possibility, but we also like to see if possible some
uh, more simple and explainable procedure, uh, these transcendental solutions belong to
the divine emergencies<<<<<<<<<<<< and I would rather see first if we cannot find some common ground for assuming that these changes were made by at least partially natural
means. I think we can rather well establish this.”

“…and the timing, but we are also somewhat concerned with the internal symbolism
of the various revelations that arose in a half a dozen areas of world culture
at the same time, in the symbolism we also seem to sense a relatedness,
the symbolism would almost suggest that a number of people had read the
same book or had become aware of the same basic facts or had
attained to the same basic conviction and that then unfolded this
illumination, in terms familiar to their own people or in terms at least partly acceptable to the entrenched traditionalism of the areas in which they existed.

Well, we must realize that all of these groups were opposed as they rose,
they all passed through certain persecutions, they created resentments,
they were declared to be heretical by someone and perhaps it was this very persecution that gave to each of them the strong substance of survival,for we know things under persecution develop a tremendous strength and an integration that can never be found in more fortunate environments, so we have now, and I think that the dead sea scrolls situation more or less fits into this. ..I am no way convinced that these scrolls are Essene products. I do not think the Essenian community
can be actually the source of them, although it may well have been the
preserver of the old manuscripts. The Essenes themselves were transition
groups between orthodox judaism and mysticism and their entire history
is noted only in these two mysterious centuries, after that they disappear utterly,
from the pages of record and account, we do not know what happened to them,
but they form part of this strange bridge of doctrines that seem to connect an
old world with a new concept of life.”

“Manly P. Hall (1901-1990) founded the Philosophical Research Society in 1934, a non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination of useful knowledge in the fields of philosophy, comparative religion, and psychology. In his long career, spanning more than 70 years of dynamic public activity, Mr. Hall delivered over 8000 lectures in the United States and abroad, authored over 150 books and essays, and wrote countless magazine articles.

Many of Mr. Hall’s lectures have been transcribed and are available as pamphlets; others were taped live, and the audio recordings are available on CD’s as well. He is perhaps best known for his 1928 classic, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages,” an encyclopedia of the world’s wisdom traditions and symbolic disciplines.

Today, younger generations are re-discovering the works and words of Manly Hall, finding that the material he put forth so many years ago is still relevant and useful today. Mr. Hall’s hope for humanity was to learn from the greatest minds of all times so that we may solve current problems – both in society and in the individual – today.”

“…and it is very possible that the reason for this sudden outburst of similar doctrines in assorted regions, came as the result of the maturing or developing of more adequate travel facilities, particularly the increase of caravan trade.
The trade was to provide luxuries for the romans and the latins, but the byproduct was the communication of ideas,
for these traders brought with them their beliefs and their doctrines, we know that this trading process for
few centuries later was to be the principal foundation for the rise of islam, but for our present concern
I think the transformation of the nature of deity is the first matter to be considered. Our primitive ancestors
gradually passed from the worship of nature to the worship of spirits from the recognition of visible forces
to the acceptance of invisible causes, behind or beyond these forces. These causes themselves
pass through innumerable reformations on the part of man, as his experience increased, it became essential to revise his theology, to keep his theology abreast of his intellectual achievements and his physical experiences.
Gradually the concept of deity as represented in the mosaic code took form, not in one area, but in many areas
and deity emerged as a being, a transcendent person, as the system was patriarchal, the deity assumed the aspect of the
great father power, it was usually personified or impersonated as a most venerable person, a great superhuman being,
a being however fashioned in the likeness of a man, a being like the mysterious and noble figure casting from his hands the sun and moon, as represented on the ceiling of the sistine chapel in Rome. This being was the great patriarch
and was compounded out of the elders, the heroes of long ago, the fathers of tribes the venerated sages and scholars,
the great priests and saints of long ago, all of these contributed their parts to the creation of the god image
and this god image was great of power, universal of authority, but subject like the creatures that
fashioned it to the whimses of disposition and temperament, subject naturally, uh, to favoritism
in bringing particular advantage and security to its chosen people, this god image was remote,
like perhaps the great golden figure of Zeus at Olympus. It was power, but it was a power inscrutable,
a power with which man could have very little intimate understanding association.
It was a power that ran all things according to its own will and in this power men were but pawns in
a great game, the gods could sweep away men merely by the will to do so and these gods lived in a heaven world
or region, far from the abode of men, even though like ancient Odin, they occasionallyn seated themselves upon the throne of all seeing and looked out upon the world to see that it was still in order.
We find this kind of deity not only arising in the near east, but having already arisen in other ancient regions as egypt india and China we find roots of it in the nature worship of Japan Shinto, we see therefore god as the ancestor,
we see god as the ancient one and we also lived in a world, ruled by certain inscrutable laws and processes,
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This god was a god of justice and a vengeance, this was the deity
who men did not dare to offend, they could respect, they could fall in or before the thought or image of this god,
but they could not meet it with personal affection, it was too distant and too far, too high, too remote,
to have any immediate part in the workings of the world. This concept also had another frailty about it
which men as they grew wiser began to contemplate, there was a weakness in this god, for this deity, living alone,
in an inscrutable internal remoteness, was assumed to be the parent of creation, in the first place man was unable to
explain how or even why god should create, there seemed to be no particular reason for it and the more men studied the
creation particularly other men, the more doubt they had in the divine wisdom in creating man in the first place.
There were many legends that deity so repented of this optimistic moment that he swept away his creation time and
time again, this problem also caused the great question to arise from what was creation fashioned, did creation actually emerge as a result of a divine fiat spoken in space by some bath shadowy being?…”

“From what did this eternal creator fashion his world?
was the world created or had it always..-
Was deity merely one of a body of immortal beings that like existence itself
had no beginning and no end?.. needed also a warmth in it
and if we look back on primitive religion,
we see that there was an astonishing lack of real warmth, men worshipped,
but some way this worship was the respect of a small child to an over
stern parent, it was a respect of fear, this deity was wonderful and awful,
it was a being which no one dared to offend, it was a father however in name only for,
no one brought their troubles to this father, they brought offerings, they propitiatedm
they prayed, but they never felt a kinship with infinite life.
This was long regarded as one of the basic weaknesses of greek religion of
all the religions of that period, probably the greek was the most pleasant,
it was the happiest, it was a worship of nature and the rituals were well arranged so
there were festivities for every season, but even so this did not represent
a real sense of intimate experience, it was not until the rise of the office
that the human being in Greece had any real spiritual significance:
he died and became a shado, he had neither punishment nor reward in
the world to come, he came forth as a flower and was cut down
and that was the story of him, it was only after philosophy began to ripen these concepts
and the human heart began to sense an internal need that it turned away from the strange
theological materialism of antiquity, this does not mean that the ancients had
no god, but they had no personal god experience, they only worshipped before the temple,
they never seemed to go in, to find that which was hidden…they did not walk with god, perhaps the old story that before the fall of man god walked in the garden in the cool of the evening carried some remembrance of other and better ways, but in the great rise of theology god did not walk with men, he ruled them he governed them, he punished them and rewarded them according to his own will and fancy.”

“We may know something of what these peoples went through two thousand years
ago, because it required a tremendous shift of perspective.
One of the important phases of this shift was the relationship between the
individual and his own personal responsibilities,
in the ancient world the gods bestowed or withheld,
their ways were not only inscrutable,
but as far as man was concerned unreasonable.
There seemed to be no particular way of explaining whythe unjust seemed to flourish and the
just to suffer, there seemed to be no reasonable explanation for the disasters and
tragedies of human existence, therefore it seemed reasonable to assume
that a deity, perhaps, with insight beyond our own, was the administrator of all this
wonderful complexity, but about the beginning of the christian era
that came into existence the tremendous sense of personal responsibility for
destiny, it shines out at us, through all of these different systems,
man’s fate moves slowly into man’s own keeping. This was not a sudden
move, but it was a rapid one…”

“so we see a marked change in a number of beliefs, one of these marked changes
included the rise of at least an archetypal form of the messianic
dispensation, all of these peoples suddenly became aware of a power of intercession in space, this is particularly obvious…we find also in india
the strict teachings of buddha are enlarged, Buddha passed through
two processes after his death, by one of these processes he was deified
and by the other process, he was, we will say, absorbed into a structure of Boddhisattvas,
of celestial beings and attendants who ministered to the spiritual needs of
mankind, a savior concept emerged. Now at almost exactly the time
of the rise of the mystical dispensation in christendom,
the buddhist concept evolved their belief in a deity
whom they called amitabha, the buddha of boundless light, this amitabha power
was seated like a remote deity in the effulgency of space,
but amitabha was not a god in fact or substance. Amitabha was a human being deified by merit
after amitabha had preserved his vow or kept his great vow which he made
before attaining to the estate of an Arhat, he became the ruler of the golden land, the land
of peace, the new jerusalem of christianity, the city four square represented often in this actual way in China, Tibet and Japan.
Amitabha then caused to emerge from his own nature, the bodhisattva avalakitasvara,
his beloved son, this bodhisattva became his representative his intercessor
and it is in the keeping of this bodhisattva that amitabha entrusted his
world..and it was the duty and responsibility of avalokita
to bring all souls to salvation through the grace of his own nature
now this concept was in vogue in Asia, risingmysteriously and miraculously in the
first century a.d., avalakitas svara later becomes a female being
and in China and Japan is often disassociated entirely from its
masculine attributes to become Kuan Yin or Qwan Yin.
A purely feminine epresentation, now depicted carrying a small child in her arms
and this particular circumstance so disconcerted the first christian missionaries in the
area that they were convinced that in some way these people were perverting the idea of
the virgin mary, but here we have this concept arising on the opposite side of the world
we have a similar concept gradually unfolding into the later religion of the Egyptians
where a comparatively unimportant local deity Osiris finally became the principal deity of
Egypt and then became the father of his own mysteriously immaculately conceived son
Horus who in turn becomes the savior of the world, the story of horus is almost identically
the in function the story of avalekita svara we find also in
many other systems either personified beings representing salvation as in the
emergence of the persian mithras, but we also find the rise of doctrines
of salvation revealed by beings who so loved mankind that they
opened the royal roads of revelation the whole picture fits together in a
strange and interesting manner now in the beginning…one is amitabha,
the the buddha of boundless light…and the word was light and the light was
the life of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it now this is practically a christian statement of buddhist philosophy now how did the doctrine get across or let us go to the kabbalah now: the kabbalists no longer accepted the mysterious name of deity that is concealed under the acrostic of the tetragrammaton
or the great name of four letters which we have translated Jehovah, they declared
that the mysterious power at the root of life the ancient of days that power which is eternal and immovable is of a triadic nature represented by three words
AIN, boundlessness, that is that which is foreverness of its own eternal nature,
that which goes on without beginning or end, representing an essence a principle unchanging unto infinity, that never this power was born, that this power shall never die,
but very much like the effort made by Aristotle to establish the causelessness of first cause, simply represents the fact that causation is itself eternal, that causation is both a motion and a substance, existing forever. This is almost identically the statement
of Lao Tzi…out of the nature of Ayn Soph and Ayn Soph is the boundless light and
out of the boundless light comes Ayn Sophia in the ancient Kabbalah and that is the
boundless light, so being life and light constitute the basic triad of the
kabbalah, being life and light constitute the basic triad of mahayana buddhism.
There is no essential difference.”

“This being, consists of essence, of a super-substantiality,
a changelessness and this being exists in the innermost
and the furthermost, it is diffused beyond dimension…
in that it has no place nor placelessness, this being then suddenly
steps out of the heavens as a person and steps into the atom..”

“To explore the meanings of life, light and being, in order to answer these essential root
questions, we have already more or less summarized their idea of AIN/AYN
or being, the absolute profundity, the eternity of things, not an eternity of time alone, but an
eternity of condition and an eternity of limitlessness,
so that this eternity had within it at all times, the roots and rudiments of an emergence
or a coming forth, thus the pythagoreans gradually developed the concept of being as seminal
or full of seed, like the mysterious statue of serapis
and alexandria the body of which was covered with growing plants, life to these people
meant the emergence of active, creative processes, things become alive when they move
when they bear fruit, when they continue the first manifestation of life is involved with
continuance, therefore absolute life is absolute continuance which again relates to
essence or total immortality.”

“Life therefore is manifested as a continuing unfoldment of the divine nature,
within itself, from itself and by means of its own power.”

“Light to these ancient peoples carried more than the illumination of
the sun or the separation between day and night,
light to them was the light of internal comprehension.
Therefore into this mystery of creatures was introduced the element of
comprehension, so that these creatures could know, could be aware,
could ultimately become conscious and the end of light was that it should
reveal the nature of the creating power. For the final purpose of light was that
it should reveal Truth and Truth in this system is nothing more
than the total statement of the reality of being.”

“uh no man had dared to think of Zeus as other than an ancient bearded Tyrant,
but now came this new concept…because of the absolute paternity of
being, but this paternity now manifested through an absolute involvement
in creation, in this way it was possible to bridge
the mysterious interval between god and man, it brought god and man together,
somewhere and it also brought creation and creator into the power of creating which was their
common meeting place. This concept made way for mysticism as we know it,
it made way for the possibility of the god experience in man for if god dwelt in man as a
an Essence, embodying or containing life and light, then this essential being could be under
some condition,knowable by man. Now the problem of no ability uh in recognized
this uh important special phase namely tha to know a thing
one must be that thing which is known and man’s power to know god resides in the beingness of god in man man is therefore truly an expression, interpretation, revelation, not of himself, but of deity and all things are merely deity unfolding its own eternity,
we find traces of neoplatonism here, we find traces of buddhism of hinduism,
we find a whole variety of ancient beliefs, moving in and forming
a unit within this rising cabalistic concept of existence.”

“on the ground of incomprehensibility, actually,the only power which can be aware of
itself is deity, all other powers have to be essentially aware of something that is not self,
therefore man’s inability to find his own source apart from god,
the individual trying to be himself achieves nothing,
because this self cannot be known apart from god,
due to the fact that this true self is god,
this was a buddhist point also, that the individual seeking to posit his
own nature at the root of life, simply desecrates the divine nature,
the individual who feels that he rises from his own causes,
has missed the essential principle of mysticism, namely that all things have,
but one cause in common and that cause us the divine nature in themselves.
We see this in Vedanta, we see it in Yoga, we see it rising in the disciplines of
Tantra, all these schools gradually converge upon these essential principles, the next point that perhaps might concern us, is this bridging from the atom which is god,
the infinite atom of infinite greatness, the infinite atom of infinite smallness,
both united however by both the state of infinite and by the
state of structure, both are strangely atomic.”

“A separate immortality was inconceivable both to the kabbalists and the buddhists
and to a measure it was also inconceivable to the christian of this period,
it has still remained a very great question in theology, but most mystics have always assumed
that the ultimate state of man has to be re-identification with deity,
inasmuch as there is no other conceivable end. as all bodies must go down to the common
earth, so all spirits must return to the common father there is no other end
this common father this eternal unconditioned essence, as represented in both eastern and western metaphysics.”

“..but to those who have studied the most abstract forms of religious idealism
are in common accord that the noblest religious concept that
we have today must be as Paul says, uh, quoting from the roman poet
concerning the nature of god: we are his children,
that it is like the parable of the prodigal son returning to his father’s
house, that in the end all things return to the earth or to god,
therefore in a sense deity becomes a symbol of earth
and earth of deity, for as earth swallows up the dead,
so deity absorbs the living, there cannot be anything left suspended
between these opposites and going nowhere.”

“the development of the great concept resulted also in a secondary god form
this secondary god form was called macroprosophus
was the clothed god, no longer clothed as an old gentleman
even with the most ecclesiastical of elements, but clothed in creation,
god as creation, god as cosmos, as an infinite diversity of Universes
and solar systems, as made up of a great cluster of stars
holding in its hand the jewel of the universal cosmic galaxy.
The vestments of this being were like the radiant fringe of the milky way
and it was surrounded by angels full of eyes which were the stars
and its vehicle was the Merkava of Ezekiel, the chariot of righteousness
and in the midst of this great machinery of the universe,
set the ancient of the most ancients the power at the root of all things
unchangeable and in its own visage unknowable.”

“We now have Ain, Ain Soph and Ain Sophia revealed
through the great face with its three-fold fork beard,
the hairs of the beard being the streamers of energy, moving from the
three powers of the deity, these are the mysterious lines of energy
that are also seen moving from the heads and hands and hearts of eastern deities.”
“This surface or the long face rises above the horizon of infinites,
like a sun rising from darkness.”

“Creation being a divine Power moving and a great natural area moved and
the Spirits of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters and the firmaments were divided
and the heaven which was above the earth was divided from the heaven which was
beneath the earth and the Universe was therefore divided between the aspects of the two great
faces, the one the reality and the other is the illusion, for the inverted face was illusion
and the inverted face had no substance, because it was reflected from the great
rising visage coming over the horizon of Eternity, here are your two essential worlds of
buddhism, the world of being and the world of not-being, the world of truth and the world of
error, the world of divine mind in the world of mortal mind.
We have the Truth and the Dream with the dream merely being Truth inverted
and the inverted truth becomes evil and the inverted truth becomes
the spirit of negation and daemon as deus in versus,
god or rather the devil is god upside down, this was one of the
oldest of the rabbinical beliefs of the kabbalists,
that in the material world of things everything is apparently reversed
that which is truly the highest shall appear to be the lowest
and that which appears to be the lowest shall be the highest…every one of these patterns strangely inverted.. therefore to these people mortal knowledge was truth upside down
to them the wisdom of the wise was as the ignorance of god…and all divine knowledge
is truth seen rightly… and those who lose their lives in the
Service of Truth will gain immortal life.”

“..and I am told do I not know that this is true, but it’s been reported to me that
Einstein was a student of the Kabbalah and that he was profoundly impressed by
the abstractions of this ancient knowledge…”

“so that man, watching the sunrise of truth within his own nature,
at the same time experiences the birth of error,
again the inversion of the fact and in this inversion comes also the
perversion of purposes and principles. Buddha said of course
that the primary perversion was the attempt to achieve externally, in this
world, a degree of security that can only be attained internally,
that man therefore seeking to perfect his outer world, was a slave of illusion,
for that the primary purpose was the perfection of the inner world,
was it the intention of deity that man should perfect his outer life
then his outer life would by its own nature be stable, which is not the case,
and the individual having given 60 or 70 or 80 years to the advancement of his
physical estate, finds that nature steps in and takes him away.
Therefore it becomes uncertain that the perfection of this state is his
primary project, that this represents to a measure the inverted face,
the face of things not in themselves true, but having a likeness of truth,
this likeness being the most dangerous of errors, a falseness masquerading…”

“..whereby the soul of the righteous might find god,
this vehicle or the chariot of righteousness
uh had its grounding or its foundation in very
deep metaphysical principles, in the buddhistic system
this embodiment of love of course is found in the figure of
Kuan Yin or Kwan Yin… avalokitis bhara, the deity of compassion,
signifying the regeneration of all passions in the fulfillment of the vow
of selflessness, other faiths also have this embodiment, sometimes this principle is embodied as a person, sometimes it is presented as a as a vehicle or a kind of means of
travel, like the chinese ship of the doctrine, but in every instance it is made
possible, because of a great unselfishness, that there is some one being,
so perfected above other beings, that it may intercede for the common good of
human natures, this is of course also conveyed in the maitreya concept and in the horus concept in Egypt,it is certainly the very soul of Saint Paul’s interpretation of the christ
ministry and it is found in a slightly altered form but equally valuable in the kabbalistic story, this deity becomes in the kabbalah the most comprehensive aspect of god that perhaps we can conceive of the interpretation goes on and on and on into infinite diversity
but it is a total concept, a concept in which there is no need for beginning or end
no need for the explanation of howthings started or how they will be completed things being in themselves infinite unite in the nature of the sovereign infinite…”

“The promised land being the equivalent of the buddhist nirvana,
in order that the 50th path may be achieved, there must come another
who shall follow after moses, but shall be preferred before him
and this other one the messiah will be permitted to pass the 50th gate
and in so doing will open the way of salvation to all men, this is one of the
elements of the kabbalah, now you can see how this does break through
and make ground, for the messianic idea or the mysterious one who is to come.
Now in orthodox jewry the waiting for the messiah continues
in the kabbalah, I believe that the concept of this messiah principle
is innate in the entire nature of deity, in other words the messiah is not a
separate being from god, the messiah is the love of god,
added to the previous attributes, so the deity becomes being,
life, light and love and this mysterious power of love,
is the mysterious hidden fourth head of Brahma.
The power that is not to be seen in the beginning of things,
but ripens out of the fullness of the mystery, for this love again
is like the merkava of righteousness, it is the power of the soul
and this power of the soul, though latent in deity, is that part of
the divine mystery which must be completed by the creature and not by the
creator. Therefore in the process of unfolding life, in the process of growth, man
experiences the rise of a new relationship with life
and as he matures, love is born as a soul in him and it is this soul power in him
which will ultimately be his savior and it is present in deity or it could
not be born in man, but its birth in man is a voluntary act and the cultivation of this power
is where determinism comes into what would otherwise appear to be a locked cycle
of god’s will, this determinism being the fact that man has the power or will develop the power to fashion from his own nature the very bridge upon which he must cross in order to reach the other shore of truth, the power of this bridge is the seed in him. It has always been present, but whereas nature will perfect this body and reason will perfect his mind,
only man’s own internal dedication will perfect the bridge by means of which he crosses from one state to another this is the ship of the doctrine that is formed from the body of
the holy boddhisattva. This is also the knave of the church for the ancients regarded the ecclesia or the church, as the ship of this salvation and they therefore regarded it as the
symbol of concord a design set up by god to carry all souls to their ultimate reunion with
deity in this then the soul of man, becomes something that is called the immortal mortal, it becomes like the hero gods of the ancient.
Well, this is this soul is something that has a birth in time, but a continuance in eternity
this is the only thing which is born but does not die.
There is a belief of course that in a mysterious way it does die, but the soul power of it does endure and does continue, the identification by the christian
kabbalists of the soul principle with the crucifixion of christ is, I think, also worth noting, because in this case christ representing the power of the soul
does die for the sin of the world, but is restored or resurrected in due time,
this concept of soul therefore forming a bridge permits another aspect
to arise namely the shadow bridge or the bridge of the inverted face
for the soul if perverted becomes the angel of self-destruction
and the the perverted soul becomes the bridge to gehenna the symbol of the bridge to limbo
destruction. Thus upon our affections or our loves according to the uh ancient peoples uh,
we build the power to conceive the nature of god and that which does not love
cannot know god.”

“The unselfish dedication of the human being to the service of others because
of a great love for god and man this becomes the bridge of salvation,
the kabbalah is very explicit on this point, it tells us very definitely of this
machinery and that therefore man is building the bridge of immortality by the unfoldment
of his own natural dedications that he cannot think himself to the
other shore, he can only experience himself there by self-forgetfulness
by the dedication of life to the service of life…”