Section 3

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really antipathetic to the life of the soul. What- ever the sense induced consciousness opposes is in reality a true attribute of the soul life; therefore we are able to see that the cloak here spoken of is not only the physical body but is a sort of sub- jective body growing out of the direct action of the senses, a body of illusion, a body of ignorance, which must be overcome by the mind freeing itself from the illusions of the senses, and that until this has been consummated it is utterly impossible for the first gleam of Gnosis to enter the consciousness. Hence to tear off this cloak while yet in the body means that the soul must become entirely independ- ent of all influences exercised by the body. The soul must become the positive pole and the body merely the expression on the physical plane of the soul life. So long as the body is the vehicle for the physical plane, it is the cloak of ignorance. It only ceases to be this when it becomes the vehicle for the soul operating upon the physical plane, but is in no sense influenced by the physical plane. Only in this way is one freed from the cloak of ignorance and enabled to enter the gnostic path. The path of true enlightenment. Such an one is in fact a spirit rather than a body. He is just as much a freed spirit as he is when he permanently leaves the body.
LESSON II
The Limitations of the Body
3. Such is the hateful cloak thou wear- est, — that throttles thee [and holds thee] down to it, in order that thou mayst not gaze above, and, having seen the Beauty of the Truth, and Good, that dwells therein, detest the bad of it; having found out the plot that it has schemed against thee, by making void of sense those seeming things which men think senses.
For that it hath with mass of matter blocked them up and crammed them full of loathsome lust, so that thou mayst not hear about the things that thou shouldst hear, nor see the things that thou shouldst see.
In order to understand this it must be thor- oughly borne in mind that the soul and body are clearly differentiated the one from the other. The soul, in the Hermetic writing, is always spoken of as the personality, the body is something separate and distinct that is made use of by the soul during its incarnate life and at the same time greatly hampers the life of the soul. Therefore the ''thou" spoken of here does not include the body but repre- sents the soul as separate and distinct from the body. This soul, however, is not to be conceived of as an impersonal ego but rather as the true per- sonality; therefore he speaks of the body as the hateful cloak thou v/earest. That is to say not only the physical body but to a certain extent the false personality induced by the body. The body and everything springing from it are described as
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3. hateful cloak. This cloak, the body and its false personality, throttle the soul and holds it down to it, the body, thus preventing the soul from realiz- ing its own true life, compelling it to function physically, forcing it to realize a purely physical life only, and thus preventing it from gazing above and seeing the Beauty and Truth and Good that dwells in the realm above, preventing the soul from detesting the bad of the lower life and preventing it from finding out the plot that the body has schemed against the soul by making void of sense those seeming things which men think sense so that one is unable to rise above this limitation of the body. This is the real crux of the situation; the fact that the senses are in reality void of sense; what the senses indicate in reality — containing the true sense. To understand this doctrine one must bear in mind the doctrine of Kosmic Sense as enunciated by Hermes. This doctrine of Kosmic Sense holds to the view that there is in nature, or in Kosmos, a principle which is termed Kosmic Sense, and which is really the depositary of all things sensible; that in a certain sense Kosmos is through certain senses made aware of the existence of all things sensible, and in fact that the sensibles are the direct product of the Kosmic sense. To understand this more accurately we must bear in mind that the sensibles are the product of a cre- ative force. Now Hermes teaches that the Kosmos is not only endowed with thought but also with sense, and that it is the perceptive faculty of the Kosmos that produces the sensibles. In other words, Kosmic sense, far from being a Kosmic fac- ulty for the perception of things already existent, is rather that sense which enables Kosmic thought to become visible to the Kosmos, a sort of imag- ing or visualizing faculty with which Kosmos is endowed ; this visualizing or imaging faculty enabling Kosmos to give form to its thought, thus
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causing Kosmic thoughts to manifest correspond- ing images, which in this way, through such imag- ing or visualizing of Kosmis, become definite forms. In this way are all things brought into being through Kosmic sense. Thus all sensibles are created by sense. Now the theory here taken is, that it is only those things perceived into existence by Kosmic sense that really are, and that really possess sense. The things which men call sense are in reality void of sense in this Kosmic sense of the term. The reason is, this Kosmic sense brings into manifestation the things that are, while the senses of man give to him distorted images, caricatures or pictures of those things, which images or pictures are never accurate. What he pleads for is that soul sense w^hich, when devel- oped, will enable man to unite this sense of his w^ith Kosmic sense and thereby sense the things as they are instead of things as they seem. A sense that will enable one to grasp noumena instead of phenomena. His indictment against the body is, in reality that the bodily senses by presenting dis- torted images of things prevent one from seeing the things as they are ; therefore by giving a man a false sense they prevent him from attaining the true sense. Therefore he accuses the body of schem- ing a plot against man to deceive him, and we are only able to discover this plot when through the awakening of the true sense we have made void of sense those seeming things which men think senses, that is to say by discovering that the testimony of the senses is in reality void of true sense. Our com- mon sense is therefore seen to be utterly senseless, because common sense is that attitude of mind w^hich grows out of the testimony of the senses and out of all the experiences which we derive through them. This being the case it w^U follow that com- mon sense w411 be as erroneous as the testimony of the senses, through which it is derived. In other
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words, common sense is at all times absolutely void of sense. In order therefore for one to see the Beauty of the Truth and Good that dwells in the realm of the soul, one must attain the true sense, and this attainment of the true sense is the all important problem with which we have to deal. But it must be borne in mind that the body's senses stand absolutely in the way, and he is indicating here the great difficulty with which we have to deal if we would attain true sense while living in the body, because the body's senses are diametric- ally opposed to the attainment of true sense.
For that it hath with mass of matter blocked them up and crammed them full of loathsome lust, so that thou may'st not hear about the things that thou should'st hear, nor see the things that thou should'st see.
We now" come to consider the cause back of the irregularity and irresponsibility of the senses, and it is stated that that is because the senses have been blocked up with mass of matter and have been crammed full of loathsome lust. The first state- ment indicates the real cause, — they have been blocked up with mass of matter. And of course he is here aluding to the physical body and its mas- sive material character. In order to understand this we must bear in mind that all sensation and all impressions of every description are due to vibra- tion, and that vibration accomplishes its work by reason of the resistance which is offered to it, but at the same time, by reason of its ability to over- come such resistance. The rate of vibration will therefore determine the quality of such impres- sions. All sensation is the result of such impression growing out of vibration. Now it will follow that the more gross the matter is through which vibration moves the less rapid will be the rate of
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vibration which can possibly move through such matter^ hence it will follow that the vibration emanating from the body, or set in motion in the ether by such body, will not be able to freely express itself through any medium more gross in its atomic and molecular structures than is the ether itself. All vibratory waves, even of a phys- ical nature, passing through the ether, will take on the etheric vibration, consequently should they contact a body more gross than the ether their vibration will be lowered in accordance with the degree of such grossness, therefore no vibration that passes through the body as a medium, can possibly represent in sensation a condition less gross than the body. The result will be the images which are indicated to consciousness through the medium of sensation will be images distorted by the grossness of the body. It at once becomes evi- dent that the sensations which we can possibly receive in the body must be very diflerent from those objects which originally produced those sensations. In order to get an understanding of this difference, take into consideration the electric light, which is produced by a current of electricity passing through a filament of carbon, then imagine this same current having to pass through an iron bar an inch in diameter, and you can have some faint idea of the difference that the body makes between the original vibratory force and the sensa- tion which we get from it. Therefore it will fol- low that the mass of matter through which vibra- tion has to pass in order to awaken physical sensa- tion is such that those sensations will never be reliable.
Next we have the statement that the body has crammed the senses full of loathsome lust. This is an outgrowth of the mass of matter that fills the senses. The loathsome lust, or desires that the senses are full of, is the result of this material ::ram-
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ming, because all vibration has to pass through this gross massive matter, and its form is correspond- ingly changed. It follows that these vibratory attractions which result from vibration, must com- pletely change their form. The gentle attraction which would exist between rapidly moving forces has become altogether different. The result is our desires cease to be mere attractions growing out of chemical affinity and become in every sense of the term corporeal, being influenced by the sensation of form, consequently sensation must naturally express itself in the form of loathsome lust. Lust is hence nothing more than the inevita- ble consequence of vibratory attraction operating through the gross physical body; hence we have lust because we have bodies, and, ordinarily speak- ing, the body is the antecedent of lust as lust is the legitimate consequence of the body. We have thus a false personality induced by those distorted sensations and by the lust which they engender. This false personality which is the avenue through which the average man feeds his mind through which all consciousness is evolved, being made up of distorted sensations and loathsome lust, keeps the soul in bond so that the soul can only grow as it is fed by the body and by this false physical per- sonality. The soul is therefore prevented from living its true life and is compelled to get all its impressions in this way. Thus it is held down by the body, enchained, as it were.
The result of this condition is that one, that is a soul, is not able to hear about the things that he should hear, nor see the things that he should see. In other words, sight and hearing are permanently shut off from the true senses. Man sees not things as they are but as they seem to this distorted per- sonality, and he hears not true sounds, or true words, but rather those distortions which the audi- tory apparatus communicate to consciousness. As
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the body does not permit one to either see or hear the true, it follows that he is shut off from reality and is forced to live in that realm of psychic dis- tortion. The soul ceases to act directly and in fact lives only through the psychic reactions result- ing from this impression of the senses. Thus it is merely a psychical reaction growing out of the distorted senses of the body. This life of psychical reaction is in reality the cause of practically all the ills with which we have to bear, and the direct action of the soul becomes practically impossible, as a result of this distorted life. From this we can easily reach the conclusion that the first step in the Hermetic Art must be the freeing of the soul from dependence upon the body's senses. So long as the soul depends upon the senses of the body it can never escape this condition, which is the ground of bad. (Dur Art, therefore, involves as its first step the attainment of that state of unfoldment in w^hich the direct action of the soul is possible. This is accomplished through the awakening of the soul sense. That sense w^hich enables the soul to unite itself with Kosmic sense and thus to sense the operations of Kosmic sense and hence see things as they are and not as they seem. When the soul's sense has been developed it must be united w^ith intuition, which is that faculty of the soul enabling it to become in a way cognizant of Kos- mic thoughts. Next the faculty of pure reason must be developed, which will enable the soul to analyze and synthesize the process of the Kosmic mind. In this way the soul becomes enabled to function independent of the body. To function in direct connection with the soul plane of the Kosmos. Therefore w^e have developed the direct action of the soul, thus freeing it from those psy- chical reactions growing out of the operation of physical sensation. When this has been accom- plished the soul no longer depends upon the senses
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for its knowledge and its concept of the world. It is now emancipated from the sway of sense engendered consciousness, having the direct soul consciousness. Thus in a sense it is free, emanci- pated, dwelling on its own plane and there being fully conscious.
After this has been attained we have then what is really the Great Work of the Hermetic Art, nam.ely, the bringing of the body into harmony with the soul so that the soul acts directly upon the body, acting from within outward unto the end that the body's sense, instead of reacting under the vibrations from without, responds to the vibra- tions from within, vvith the result that the soul sense reproduces itself through the medium of the body sense. Thus the body's sense, instead of act- ing in the usual manner, in reality dramatizes the soul sense. Of course in order that this state may be realized we have to first develop the body through a process of transmutation or alchemical- ization to the point where it will respond through its material atoms and molecules to the vibration of the soul. Of course this is never fully realized. However, as this process of transmutation goes on from day to day, it becomes more refined, more etherealized, more spiritualized, more subtle, until at last it reaches the point where it responds fairly well to the vibration of the soul. Thus the alchemy of the body is the next step in the Sacred Art which must be begun subsequent to the free- ing of the soul from dependence upon the body. It will therefore be seen that the process is exactly reversed from what it is in the ordinary mind. The natural man is the one in whom the bodily senses control the soul, feed and instruct the soul from without, while the Artistic man is the one in w^hom the soul controls and dominates the body and its senses, causing them to reproduce in terms of physical sensation the consciousness of the soul.
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All processes of bodily generation are therefore reversed. In the Artistic man they are controlled in all their operations by the generative activity of the soul, hence they are regenerated from with- in. Therefore the Artistic life is very often termed the regenerate life while the natural life is the gen- erate life. This is the true key to the Hermetic Art as applied to the life of man.