(By Manly P. Hall) – The lowest of these divisions is the physical nature, and those who dwell therein are of the earth, earthy; they live only for the gratification of their physical natures. Their idea of heaven is a place where there is food, feasting, and little or no work…Their minds are only partly active. Their bodies resemble prisons more than dwelling places…they live to labor, plodding along to a mediocre destiny…Give them opulence and they cannot retain it. Give them luxuries, and they do not appreciate them. They are the dark earthy ones who must ever bow before intelligence. They do not love God, for they cannot know Him.

The second division is made up of the artisans and those who labor both with mind and hand…They buy, sell, and exchange…Having a mind, they control the mindless…Not having the mental organism with which to reason, they fill the places of worship where thinking is done for them. They are the ones who allow their clergy to decide all spiritual problems for them, feeling themselves incapable of assuming the onus of heavy thinking…their credulity is utilized as a commercial asset by certain types of minds who consider it legitimate to capitalize on the ignorance of others.

The third class is made up of the scientists…they attack the boundary lines of the known…Those who wage this war in the cause of science are mostly concrete thinkers who follow as far as their instruments will lead them and then must wait for instruments still more powerful. Most of these minds are atheistic or at least agnostic…The miracles of theology are incapable of chemical analysis and are consequently taken cum grano salis by the scientific world.

The fourth and highest group embraces philosophers, musicians, and artists, all living in an abstract mental world surrounded by dreams and visions wholly unrecognizable by the other types. They have reached beyond the world of academic education to the world of creative idealism, which is at present the highest function of the human mind. This world is the dwelling place of genius, of invention, and of the things which lower mentalities can only accept but never analyze. Religiously, these minds are deistic. Most of them are monotheists – believers in one God. Many of them are mystics or occultists…

SOURCE: Manly P Hall / What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples

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