Section 9

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from creeping in and sowing in the soul also the seed of their own energy, so that the energy of the daimons will cause the awakening of activity which will in this way sow seed into the mind causing daimonial thought to be there conceived and manifested in act. Therefore we can see that in reality man does little or nothing. The teaching that man's life is in the hands of fate is really true, because man cannot think of himself, he can only conceive in the mind such thoughts as the seeds sown in his mind by God, or the daimons, will inspire, unless, of course, it be the thought that is awakened by the senses and by experience and observation, etc. But we are here speaking of the higher thought. And this is the real key to dual inspiration, — thought of the gods and thought of the daimons. All daimonial inspiration will nec- essarily lead to evil thought and evil deeds, while the inspiriation on the part of the gods will like- wise inevitably lead to good thoughts and good deeds. Therefore the evil in man is really the result of his responsiveness to daimonial impulses.
And mind conceives the seed thus sown ; adultery, murder, parricide [and] sacrilege, impiety, [and] strangling, casting down precipices, and all such other deeds as are the work of evil daimons.
The seeds of the demonial energy being sown in the mind by acting upon the substance of the mind causes it to conceive the seed thus sown; in other words, thoughts corresponding to those seeds, that is to say, daimonial thoughts, are conceived and these thoughts breed emotions and the emo- tions actions, and thus adultery, murder, parricide, sacrilege, impiety and all such kindred evil deeds, are the result of the seeds of daimons entering into
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the mind and there conceiving thought or causing the mind to conceive thought which engenders action. Thus sins are not due to the total depravity of man; they are not due to inbred sin from gen- eration to generation; such superstitions are with- out foundation in fact. Sins are due to the fact that the energy of the daimons enters into man's mind and entering there deposits the seed which conceives corresponding thought and ultimately engenders evil deeds. Man is responsible only to the extent that his mind is receptive to the seeds of the demonial energy. To that extent he is re- sponsible. In other words, he is responsible to the extent that he is not perfectly divine, to the extent that any influence other than the thought of God can operate. We have here a very important doc- trine; a doctrine which the cheap organisms seem absolutely unable to grasp ; namely, that morality is of very little importance; that the really im- portant thing is the spiritual state of the soul; that everything depends not upon specific deeds, but upon the degree of refinement in spirituality of the human soul. When we come to realize this w^e will pay little attention to what a man says or does ; we will be more interested in the scale of humanity to which he belongs. Man is really to be classified by the degree in which he has approached the di- vine, the degree of fineness in the mind. In other words, there are no such things as good men or bad men, if you will look at it properly, but there is such a thing as inferior and superior types of man. Man must be graded that way, not in the ordinary way that is common to the cheap organ- isms. In other words, cheap organisms are incap- able of anything but evil, while superior organisms in proportion to the relative degree of their supe- riority, evolve the capacity for good.
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4. The seeds of God 'tis true, are few, but vast and fair, and good— virtue and self- control, devotion. Devotion is God-Gnosis ; and he who knoweth God being filled with all good things, thinks godly thoughts and not thoughts like the many [think].
For this cause they who Gnostic are, please not the many nor the many them. They are thought mad and laughed at; they're hated and despised, and sometimes even put to death.
For we did say that bad must needs dwell here on earth, where 'tis in its own place. Its place is earth, and not Cosmos as some will sometimes say with impious tongue.
But he who is a devotee of God, will bear with all once he has sensed the Gnosis. For such an one all things, e'en though they be for others bad, are for him good; deliber- ately he doth refer them all unto the Gnosis and, thing most marvelous, 'tis he alone who maketh bad things good.
The seeds of God 'tis true, are few, but vast and fair, and good — virtue and self-con- trol, devotion. Devotion is God-Gnosis; and he who knoweth God, being filled with all good things, thinks godly thoughts and not thoughts like the many [think].
Having shown the nature of the seeds of the daimons, their effect upon the thinking and life of man, he next turns his attention to the seeds of God. These seeds of God, that is the seeds which
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are able to emanate from God and entering the mind of man conceive thoughts after their kind, are few, but they are vast and fair, and good; be- cause nothing could be vaster, nothing could be fairer, nothing could be better than the seeds emanating directly from God. We might say there are three characteristics that are conceived in the mind of man as a result of the divine seed and they come only from the divine seed. These are virtue, self-control and devotion. It must be borne in mind that virtue was used in ancient times in an entirely different sense to what it is used at the present time. It was synonymous with virile man- hood, with all those characteristics which, as the fellow said, are characteristics of a '^shore-enough man." It was not virtuous to do things which would not be manly. A man might have no re- ligious scruples about a thing, but he was too virtuous to do it, that is, it would be beneath his dignity as a ^'shore-enough man" to do anything of the kind. Virtue, therefore, represents the manly quality, the proud manly quality that scorns to do that which is mean or low, that which is not char- acteristic of the ideal man. And this virtue can only operate in the mind of a man as the result of his receiving divine seeds in his mind. This seed of virtue emanating from divinity, that is from the anthropos, the archetypal divine man, w^hen that seed enters the human mind it conceives virtuous thoughts, thoughts proper to a real man; the manly thoughts, virtuous thoughts, and all virtuous actions emanate from this virtuous think- ing. Now bear this in mind, there is none of the humble, worm-of-the-dust, poor cringing sinner, in the virtuous man. A timid man, a meek man in the ordinary sense of the word, can never have any virtue. A virtuous man is always proud, he always covers the ground he stands on, he is sure of him-
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self, absolutely conscious of himself — of his worth. He knows his greatness, therefore he must be proud as the eagle if he expects to be virtuous.
The next divine seed is that of self-control. It is this which gives man the self-contained, self- mastering attitude. That is to say, man is not car- ried away by his passions, by his impressions, by his impulses; but he dominates them all, he con- trols them; all the aspects of his manifest selfhood are in leash, they are under perfect control. Such a man can say truly I am the Yauwa; I am the I-will-be-what-I-will-be. In other words, it is this quality of self-control that makes the superman. And this comes from its divine source. It is the proud self-controlled, self-restrained impulses that develop corresponding thought and that enable man through reason to subjugate all his passions and using them, but not allowing them to use him. The self-controlled man is not a man without passions; he is not an eastern acetic who subdues or crushes out his passions; he is full of passion, but it is always under the rigid control of his will directed by his intelligence, so that he can make use of those passions when he needs them in his business, but never lets them interfere with him.
The other seed of God is devotion. This seed that is implanted in the mind of man is the tend- ency to draw his soul out to God. It, when deposited in the mind, conceives thoughts which naturally turn to God, which are drawn to God as the steel to the magnet. The God power is the magnetism which attracts such devotional thoughts toward God, hence devotion is in reality a yearn- ing after God, a taking hold upon God, and we are informed that such devotion is God-Gnosis; in other words, the Gnosis, or knowledge of God, comes by reason of a mind that turns in the direc- tion of God; in other words, a mind is never able
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to learn anything about God until it becomes inter- ested in the subject; until God becomes a very attractive subject for our mental contemplation we can know nothing about God. Now devotion does not mean mumbling prayers, it does not mean the acts of devotion which fanatics think it means; it means a mental interest in God, a yearning for the knowledge of God, for an understanding of the essence of God. It is this devotion, therefore, this turning of the mind toward God, which is itself the outgrowth of the seeds of God being planted there, which gives man Gnosis of God. He who knows God as a result of this God-Gnosis operating in his mind is filled with all good things. That is to say, the Gnosis of God in the mind renders it negative to all the seeds emanating from on high, all the non-demonial seeds, and thus they enter into the mind and soul, hence the seeds of all things good are there and the conception of those good things begins. He thinks godly thoughts and not thoughts like the many think. In other words, the thinking of this one being conceived of seed ema- nating from God, is godly, godlike, or similar to the thinking of God the Mind, or of the lesser divinities. It is thinking after the nature of God's thought and hence, of course, it is not like the many think at all, because the many have their thinking conceived from daimonial seed. The result is the Gnosis is in time entirely immune from the seed emanating from the daimonial because he has a mind completely filled with the seed of God; all his thinking is controlled by them and conse- quently there is no unoccupied area in his mind, no part of the mind that might be acted upon by the seed of daimons, hence no thought other than; God thought can be conceived therein.
For this cause they who Gnostic are,
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please not the many nor the many them. They are thought mad and laughed at; they're hated and despised and sometimes even put to death.
In this paragraph Hermes explains to us the antipathy between the Gnostic and the cheap or- ganism. There is no greater fallacy than the idea that a good man will win the love of a bad man, — win the love of everybody; there is no greater tommy-rot than this nonsensical proposition. The cheap organism hates the enlightened soul beyond anyone in all the world. There is the most intense antipathy on the part of the rabble toward the superior man. If one finds himself hated and despised by the people, let him rest assured they are paying him the highest compliment. They are incapable of appreciating the attitude of the good, the pure, the spiritual. It is not only a lack of appreciation, it is an attitude of absolute antag- ' onism, absolute antipathy. And why? Because the rabble thinks only such thoughts as are con- ceived from seed entering their minds from the daimons, while the Gnostic thinks only such thoughts as are conceived by seed entering the mind from God. The result is that the same antipathy that exists between God and the daimons must exist between the Gnostic and the cheap organism. And this is not to be deplored altogether, because they have separate and distinct functions. The cheap organism is related to matter, the Gnostic, on the other hand, is related to substance. The cheap organism, the material man or the daimonial man measuring everything by his own ignorance, thinks the Gnostic is mad and laughs at him. Be- cause of the Gnostic's indifference to matter and the cheap organism's indifference to substance, they are hated and despised as weak, as inferior, and
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are sometimes even put to death because of their superior knowledge. They can never please the cheap organism, and the cheap organism can never please them. Any man who talks about loving everybody is either a deliberate liar or else he has no spiritual realization. The Gnostic may tolerate the cheap organism, in fact, he should, but to be pleased with him is simply out of the question. It is utterly impossible for the developed soul to take pleasure in, to enjoy the society, of cheap organ- isms. Because they are as far asunder as the poles, they represent two separate and distinct extremes of existence, and this accounts for the persecution of the pure and holy by the cheap organisms. They want to get rid of them^ because of this antipathy, and in the last analysis, the real thing that is in- volved, is the war of the daimons to keep the gods from gaining influence on earth.
For we did say that bad must needs dv>ell here on earth, where 'tis in its own place. Its place is earth, and not Cosmos as some will some times say with impious tongue.
Here we have the crux of the situation. The earth is the realm of bad, bad must needs dwell here on earth where it is in its own place. The earth is therefore the place of bad; the space in w^hich the bad is made manifest. The evolution on the earth for the present time at least must be through the bad. All terrene evolution is due to the operation of bad principles. This is not true of the Kosmos, but it is true of the earth. Now^ as the earth must evolve through the bad, therefore it must evolve through the action of the daimons. They are the ones who conduct the terrene evo- lution. Hence this evolution depends upon the proportion of bad that is manifested here, — that is
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the daimonial influence. Now in order that man as a race may evolve, that the earth may go through its terrene experience, speaking from the stand- point of race, he must be a bad man, and therefore he will express in his thought the seed of the daimon. The result is the kosmic man, that is one functioning in Kosmos as well as in the earth, a substantial man, a good man, is a disruptive influ- ence in the life of the earth. In other words, he is a heavy charge of nitro-glycerine, lyddite and gun cotton dropped into the social fabric. He is always more or less of a disruptive influence. And that is really his purpose. It is not intended in the kosmic scheme that there should be very many good men on the earth. It is after the manner of an aerolite, a comet, or a meteor, descending from heaven to knock the earth back into shape, or to shake and disorganize its crystalized state, so that it will go through an additional ferment as it were. Naturally the daimons and the daimonial men do not appreciate the value of such disturbing influ- ences. This being the case, they show a considerable measure of opposition to such visitations from the heavenly world, and this is the real cause of the antipathy which the daimonial man or the cheap organism bears to the Gnostic, or the superman. Kosmos is not the sphere of evil, of bad, as is the earth, but is relatively good; hence the substantial man is a relatively good man. Of course there is no such thing as an absolutely good man ; but the kosmic man is relatively good, and his goodness makes him a menace to the stability of terrene society.
But he who is a devotee of God, will bear with all once he has sensed the Gnosis. For such an one all things, e'en though they be for others bad, are for him good; deliber-
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ately he doth refer them all unto the Gnosis, and, thing most marvelous, 'tis he alone who maketh bad things good.
The man in whom the God seed of devotion has been sown, so that his thinking becomes devotional, causing his w^hole mind to turn in the direction of God, so that he becomes a devotee of God, one devoted to God, one whose business or avocation in life is service to God, this attitude will cause him to bear with bad if he has once sensed the Gnosis. Now notice, the Gnosis comes through sense. That is to say. Gnosis is not acquired by man's mental striving. Gnosis is sown in the mind of man, which acts as a receptacle for its being deposited there when that man has attained devo- tion. Devotion brings him into that state of close contact with God which illumines his mind with the light of Gnosis, causing it to conceive thoughts under the impulse of the divine light. Such an one w^ill bear with all. For such an one all things, even though for others bad, are for him good. He deliberately refers them all unto the Gnosis. In other words, the Gnostic is so wise that he realizes every bad thing serves a good purpose. He realizes that all evil is good in the making. That is to say that good is bound to come out of bad, of evil ; that the bad is absolutely necessary for the evolution of matter; hence he knows that the cheap organ- isms who are poking fun at him will be Gnostics just like him in the course of about thirty thousand years, and he knows that they would not be Gnos- tics then if they were not bad men now. He knows that this very bad principle is the principle of terrene evolution, that matter can be evolved in no other way; therefore he realizes that the bad man is a man who can only evolve through being bad, consequently he does not condemn the bad