Pythagoras brought his doctrines from the eastern sanctuaries, and Plato compiled them into a form more intelligible than the mysterious numerals of the sage — whose doctrines he had fully embraced — to the uninitiated mind. Thus, the Cosmos is “the Son” with Plato, having for his father and mother the Divine Thought and Matter.
“The Egyptians,” says Dunlap, “distinguish between an older and younger Horus, the former the brother of Osiris, the latter the son of Osiris and Isis.” The first is the Idea of the world remaining in the Demiurgic Mind, “born in darkness before the creation of the world.” The second Horus is this “Idea” going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with matter, and assuming an actual existence.
“The mundane God, eternal, boundless, young and old, of winding form,” say the Chaldean Oracles.
This “winding form” is a figure to express the vibratory motion of the Astral Light, with which the ancient priests were perfectly well
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acquainted, though they may have differed in views of ether, with modern scientists; for in the AEther they placed the Eternal Idea pervading the Universe, or the Will which becomes Force, and creates or organizes matter.
“The will,” says Van Helmont, “is the first of all powers. For through the will of the Creator all things were made and put in motion. . . . The will is the property of all spiritual beings, and displays itself in them the more actively the more they are freed from matter.” And Paracelsus, “the divine,” as he was called, adds in the same strain: “Faith must confirm the imagination, for faith establishes the will. . . . Determined will is a beginning of all magical operations. . . . Because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result, is that the arts are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain.”
The opposing power alone of unbelief and skepticism, if projected in a current of equal force, can check the other, and sometimes completely neutralize it. Why should spiritualists wonder that the presence of some strong skeptics, or of those who, feeling bitterly opposed to the phenomenon, unconsciously exercise their will-power in opposition, hinders and often stops altogether the manifestations? If there is no conscious power on earth but sometimes finds another to interfere with or even counterbalance it, why wonder when the unconscious, passive power of a medium is suddenly paralyzed in its effects by another opposing one, though it also be as unconsciously exercised? Professors Faraday and Tyndall boasted that their presence at a circle would stop at once every manifestation. This fact alone ought to have proved to the eminent scientists that there was some force in these phenomena worthy to arrest their attention. As a scientist, Prof. Tyndall was perhaps pre-eminent in the circle of those who were present at the seance; as a shrewd observer, one not easily deceived by a tricking medium, he was perhaps no better, if as clever, as others in the room, and if the manifestations were but a fraud so ingenious as to deceive the others, they would not have stopped, even on his account. What medium can ever boast of such phenomena as were produced by Jesus, and the apostle Paul after him? Yet even Jesus met with cases where the unconscious force of resistance overpowered even his so well directed current of will. “And he did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”
There is a reflection of every one of these views in Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Our “investigating” scientists might consult his works with profit. They will find therein many a strange hypothesis founded on old ideas, speculations on the “new” phenomena, which may prove as reasonable as any, and be saved the useless trouble of inventing new
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theories. The psychic and ectenic forces, the “ideo-motor” and “electro-biological powers”; “latent thought” and even “unconscious cerebration” theories, can be condensed in two words: the kabalistic ASTRAL LIGHT.
The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer’s works differ widely with those of the majority of our orthodox scientists. “In reality,” remarks this daring speculator, “there is neither matter nor spirit. The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in human brain. . . .
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
