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The Secret of the Ages
by John Randolph Price An excerpt from Nothing is Too Good to be True If we’re going to change our lives and return this world to sanity, our first step is to take a close look at the greatest spiritual and philosophical system the world has ever known. This is not an exaggeration. By applying the principles of this system, lives can be dramatically changed. It offers not only hope, but The Way to peace, plenty, and a life of true bliss. We call it “New Thought” today, but in reality, it’s the Golden Cord of the Perennial Philosophy, the Spiritual Teachings of Ancient Wisdom brought forth as the Secret Doctrine of Practical Mastery. It’s the answer to every problem on planet Earth today. Let’s not confuse New Thought with “New Age.” The former is a spiritual movement, a divine philosophy, a way of life based in Principle. New Age, on the other hand, is identified with “the Age of Aquarius,” based on the motion of the equinoxes, a new period emphasizing freedom and the release from old concepts. It’s wonderful that we have this new door of opportunity, but there’s so much more to life than an arc of the zodiac. New Age is also a state of mind that focuses on alternatives — the unconventional and the nontraditional. There’s nothing wrong with that, but in some cases, this has led us into a preoccupation with the world of effects, taking us away from an understanding of Loving Cause and giving us many external battles to fight. And in the eyes of many fundamentalists, New Age has been seen as anti-Christian, promoting a one-world religion and government with a vast network of organizations designed to establish a New World Order. There may be fringe groups that have contributed to this belief with their emphasis on inner governments, the uniting of church and state in an esoteric theocracy, and so-called control conspiracies, but such activities are not in tune with the love, joy, beauty, and purity of New Thought. Personally, I’d like to see us draw from all religions; find our freedom as individuals in the mainstream of Right Thinking; take our eyes off “this world” for a time; and focus on God, Truth, and Self-Reliance. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The only progress ever known was of the individual.” To continue, Truth was first given to sleeping humanity in symbols, next in music and song, later in myths and legends, and then in poetry and parables. One of these legends tells us that in 9500 B.C., spiritually illumined Initiates became the first “divine” rulers in Egypt. They were considered the Grand Magicians, having the mind power to manifest form and maintain dominion over the effects of this world. Little else is known about them, and we later pick up their thread in about 5000 B.C., when “Great Ones” appeared to teach the functional principles of cosmic law, the spiritual powers of each individual, and the aspects of God that represent the laws of all phenomena. The key here was to understand that we create our own reality, that mind is the creative agent, and that we have the power to project either a Heaven or hell on the screen of life. This was the first teaching that dealt with metaphysical principles and what we now call the subjective realm—that what we impress on the inner is expressed in the outer. It was also the initial revelation of the causal powers within us, first called neters and later referred to as archetypes, or original patterns of living energy. These ancient archetypes predate all wisdom teachings in written form, and most aspects of religion, philosophy, astrology, and metaphysics are directly or indirectly based on these causal powers living and working in each individual’s energy field. It was during this time that Freemasonry, the craft of initiated builders, came forth. Albert Pike has written that Masonry is “more ancient than any of the world’s living religions,” and it was said that through an understanding of spiritual Reality and a dedication to Wisdom, Love, and Service, the Master Masons attained “supernatural” powers. The Rosicrucian Order, with its emphasis on spiritual rebirth and the Law of Love, can also be traced back to this period in history. In 3000 B.C., we were introduced to the “Twelve Labors of Hercules,” a symbolic drama portraying the path of return to Truth. It was a continuing call to “know thyself” as God made manifest. According to The Labours of Hercules: An Astrological Interpretation, by Alice A. Bailey: “... back of the objective world of phenomena, human or solar, small or great, organic or inorganic, lies a subjective world of forces which is responsible for the outer form. Behind the outer material shell is to be found a vast empire of BEING ... . Everything outer and tangible is a symbol of inner creative forces and it is this idea that underlies all symbology. A symbol is an outer and visible form of an inner and spiritual reality. “It is with this interplay of the outer form and the inner life that Hercules wrestles. He knew himself to be the form, the symbol, for the dominance of the lower material nature made its presence felt with the facility of age-long expression. At the same time he knew that his problem was to express spiritual being and energy. He had to know in fact and in experience that he was God, immanent in nature; that he was the Self in close relation to the Not-Self; he had to experiment with the law of cause and effect, and this from the standpoint of the initiator of the causes in order to produce intelligent effects.” When the twelve labors were completed, Hercules’ teacher said, “The jewel of immortality is yours. By these twelve labors have you overcome the human, and put on the divine. Home you have come, no more to leave.” Think now. In the far distant past, it was taught that we are spiritual beings endowed with all the powers of God, and as we overcome the human, we have dominion over this world. Within 500 years of this myth, mystics in ancient India began receiving and spreading the Truth that God is All, and the Self is God, God alone the Reality of all beings. Then, between 2500 and 1500 B.C. (the dates vary), Hermes Trismegistus, the “scribe of the gods,” came on the world stage to tell about the Spirit of the Divine within. In his writings, he implores humanity to “rise from your sleep of ignorance” and to find the Light. He tells us that we have the power to partake of immortality when we change our minds, and he gave us the Seven Hermetic Principles as the way to mastery. They are as follows: 1. The Principle of Mentalism: There is but one Mind, one Power, all Divine. We use the same mind and power in our individual worlds that the All did in creating the universe. 2. The Principle of Correspondence: As above, so below. This shows us that there is a correspondence or analogy existing between things spiritual and things physical — the same laws operate in each realm. This is truly the secret of manifestation. 3. The Principle of Vibration: In each energy field, there is a vibration of either attraction or repulsion based on the trend of thoughts. These thoughts are both conscious and unconscious, and on each level, creative action is taking place. 4. The Principle of Polarity: Polarity is to think and feel in a certain direction, to bring our thoughts in tune with Infinite Mind, which forms a path for the flow of the divine energy. It is living life according to our highest truth. 5. The Principle of Rhythm: Life is like a pendulum, a swinging back and forth. When we understand this principle, we polarize ourselves at the point of optimum living, thus neutralizing the ups and downs of life. 6. The Principle of Cause and Effect: Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to Law. Chance is but a name for the Law not recognized. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. 7. The Principle of Gender: Each individual is both male and female, mind and feelings, objective and subjective, the I and the Me. What the mind impresses on the feeling nature is manifest in the phenomenal world. In 1335 B.C., Moses brought his esoteric teachings from Egypt in the Exodus. According to Manly P. Hall, “Moses was an accredited representative of the secret schools, laboring — as many other emissaries have labored — to instruct primitive races in the mysteries of their immortal souls ... . The word Moses, when understood in its esoteric Egyptian sense, means one who has been admitted into the Mystery Schools of Wisdom and has gone forth to teach the ignorant concerning the will of the gods and the mysteries of life, as these mysteries were explained within the temples of Isis, Osiris, and Serapis.” Zoroaster appeared in 628 B.C., to be known as the Persian prophet who taught the truth of the one and only God, a Supreme Being of Good Thought, Beauty, Holiness, Righteousness, Perfect Health, Dominion, and Immortality. Zoroaster believed in the oneness of God and individual being, and that prayers were the “speaking of friend to friend.” Lao-tzu incarnated in 604 B.C., later to found the Taoist religion in China, with its emphasis on living in harmony with the great Universal Impersonal Power. He taught that Heaven, Earth, and man/woman were all created to be in harmony with one another, but we lost our way and miscreated a world of disharmony. We move on now to about 600 B.C., when Pythagoras — a Mason, and also considered to be the world’s first philosopher — was born. He founded a Mystery School at Crotona in southern Italy, and his teachings reveal another important thread in the Golden Cord of the Perennial Philosophy, an ancient truth carried forward to this day. Pythagoras taught that God, or Supreme Mind, was the Cause of all things, and since God was all Truth, then the effect of this Cause must be Truth, or Spiritual Reality — when the individual was in harmony with Cause. He believed that we needn’t ask for anything because the Intelligent Power of God was eternally providing all things necessary. Thus, the “secret” of prayer was to be in tune with Infinite Mind. In 563 B.C., Siddhartha Gautama came forth to become Buddha, the Enlightened one. He believed in universal good will expressed from a heart of love “that knows no anger, that knows no ill will.” Gautama understood that lack, limitation, disease, and death are but illusions, not created by God, therefore not real. His Eightfold Path to freedom encompassed right belief, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right thought, and right meditation. As a true New Thought statement, he said, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure heart, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.” In 427 B.C., the Greek philosopher Plato entered the Earth plane. At the age of 49, he was initiated into the Greater Mysteries, the initiation taking place in the Great Pyramid of Egypt. In 397 B.C., he opened a school called the Academy, which became the first university in the history of Europe. H. P. Blavatsky wrote: “Basing all his doctrines upon the presence of the Supreme Mind, Plato taught that the nous, spirit, or rational soul of man, being ‘generated by the Divine Father,’ possessed a nature kindred, or even homogeneous, with the Divinity, and was capable of beholding the eternal realities. Plato put great emphasis on the Ideal Life as a goal toward which people should work. This “Ideal” means that every individual is worthy of a royal life of beauty and nobility — that nothing is impossible to “Gods in Expression.” He also introduced the Christos: the immortal Self endowed with all the qualities of Deity. Then we had the Master Jesus, an Essene. He was introduced to us in the New Testament, and his statements of Truth continue to shine through the pages. However, as a whole, these books of the Bible, which weren’t finalized until nearly A.D. 400, must be interpreted esoterically. As we shall see, they’ve been rewritten numerous times to prove the church’s point of view; yet secretly, enlightened ones have contributed their part and have provided coded instructions reflecting the teachings and philosophy of the earlier Masters. Jesus, the Master of the Law of Love, is shown to be the representative of everyone, our brother in the universal family of God, a Model for our completeness — spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Continuing the “New Thought” Golden Cord, we’re told that we are the light of the world, that we must be perfect as a fact of life, that we are to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons because all things are possible. This is true, for the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. Ye are gods and the Spirit of truth dwells with you, in you. You yourself are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, for you have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God. Christ in you, the hope of glory. You are of God. In the Pistis Sophia Treatise of the Gnostics, Jesus takes it even further: “Do ye still not know and are ye ignorant? Know ye not and do ye not understand that ye are all Angels, all Archangels, Gods, and Lords, all Rulers, all the great Invisibles, all those of the Midst, those of every region of them that are on the Right, all the Great Ones of the emanations of the Light with all their glory ...” The truth was clearly expressed, and with this remembering in minds and hearts, the powers were again released. In the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon reports that during the first century, the lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, and the laws of nature were frequently suspended. But it all changed. In A.D. 180, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, attacked independent thinking and all teachings relating to the oneness of God and man. Believing that a spiritual consciousness and a personal union with God would undermine the authority of the priests, he directed his wrath upon Gnosticism. First he issued his Five Books Against Heresies, followed by a list of acceptable writings — choosing only those words that supported his demand for a fixed dogma. The shift in mind-direction from within to without had begun, and the innate power of the individual was gradually given to an outer structure and a lower authority. When emperor Theodosius made Christianity the sole and official religion of the state in A.D. 395, the Institution assumed complete control over individual minds and humanity entered the thousand-year period referred to as the Dark Ages. The feudal system controlled secular life, and the keys to spiritual enlightenment were held by the church leaders. A too-free subjective interpretation of the doctrine, or lack of faith in the state religion, resulted in extreme penalties. And with the constant struggle between the church and the individual, the mastery techniques dealing with freedom from need and the science of forces and forms were temporarily lost. The Western mind was kept “in the dark” until the institutional structure began to crack in the 1500s ... and the eternal principles of oneness and unity began to resurface. In Europe in the 1600s, the Rosicrucian Fraternity surfaced again and became the center of philosophical discussion. Members of this secret society were known to transcend the limitations of the physical world through their spiritual awakening. They taught that within each individual being was the Supreme Secret of the universe, and that by following the Path of Reality, Truth shall be revealed. Other secret societies based on the teachings of the Greek Mystery Schools also emerged in England, France, and Germany; and in the 1800s, the philosophical movement known as transcendentalism came into full bloom as the beginning of New Thought in America. The writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson played a significant role in advancing the ancient teachings of Truth. He wrote: “Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid them take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.” Emerson, who had studied the Ancient Mysteries, knew that once these eternal Truths are appropriated by mind, we’re no longer controlled by fate. We pass into a higher council chamber and a life of sovereignty. Emerson said, “Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right and a perfect contentment.” To him, prayer was not to “effect a private end” but to establish oneness with God in consciousness and then see the miraculous activity of God at work. Next came the Metaphysical Movement ushered in by Phineas Quimby, the Theosophical Society founded by H. P. Blavatsky and Henry Olcott, and Christian Science founded by Mary Baker Eddy. And then the New Thought Movement came forth through the work and teachings of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore (Unity), Nona Brooks (Divine Science), and Ernest Holmes (Religious Science). While appreciating the philosophies of the religious-metaphysical organizations that preceded it, the New Thought pioneers didn’t fully accept their doctrines with such emphasis placed on karma and “mortal mind.” The idea that there’s no truth, reality, or substance in objective appearances was also quickly dismissed, thus paving the way for greater understanding of Mind and manifestation. There are no “mesmeric illusions.” All is Universal Mind “pressing out” into visibility as the substance of all things. Now the principle for health, wealth, and happiness was complete. In A Holmes Reader on Meaning, Ernest Holmes wrote: “The Bible says that in the beginning all things were made by the Word and without the Word was not anything made that is made. It also says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This strikes at the very bottom of spiritual philosophy, emphasized by Jesus and Plato, Swedenborg, Buddha, Whitman, Browning and others, in which they affirm that for every objective, physical or material fact in the universe there must be a subjective, spiritual or mental cause which is the power and reality back of the fact. “The universe is a spiritual system, conceived in the Mind of God as an idea, and automatically projected into manifestation through mental and spiritual laws. Browning said that we should release the “imprisoned splendor,” which is the divine pattern within us. Whitman said, “I doubt not that there are other eyes behind these eyes.” Swedenborg taught a law of correspondences; that the invisible world contains a pattern of everything in the visible. We find the same teaching in the philosophy of Plato and his followers, in which they say there is a prototype or likeness in the invisible world for everything that appears in the visible.” In another booklet, Holmes wrote: “That which distinguishes the new thought from the old is not a denial of this Divine Reality, but an affirmation of its immediate availability. The miracles of the ages must become commonplace occurrences in the new order of life. The lightning which flashed across the heavens and frightened primordial man with the terror of its magnificence, is some part of that same electrical energy which drives our modern world. The awfulness of God which struck terror into the hearts of our ancestors is today the benign Power, the gentle Influence, and the persistent Law which governs our thought. “Let us convert prayer into a conscious communion with the Invisible and faith into a dynamic use of spiritual Power. Let us take the “mist” out of the mysterious. Let us understand that one Divine Power has always existed and has always interpreted Itself to people by interpreting Itself through them.” In 1915, William Walker Atkinson gave us a brief history of New Thought. Here are excerpts from his book New Thought: Its History and Principles: “In 1840, The Dial was founded, with Margaret Fuller as the first editor, and such men as Emerson, Channing, Alcott, Theodore Parker, Ripley, and Thoreau, as contributors. Afterwards, Emerson became the editor. This journal was the official organ of the Transcendental Movement, and served to fasten the attention of the nation upon it and its principles. “New Thought is not an organization — it is a MENTAL ATTITUDE. Many manifest “New Thought” principles with success in their everyday lives — and yet do not realize that New Thought has had anything to do with their views. They have simply absorbed the New Thought spirit which surrounds them on all sides. The orthodox pulpits echo New Thought sermons every Sunday, although the term is never mentioned — and this, too, is well, for New Thought is, and should be, as free as air, and the property of all ... . And now for a brief statement of the general principles of New Thought ... . “The fundamental principle underlying all New Thought ideas is that there exists AN INFINITE AND ETERNAL SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE OF BEING. This Principle of Being ... is without beginning and without ending; without limits of time, space, or power; absolute; unconditioned; and alone without a second, a rival, or a companion. The qualities of Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and Omniscience — all power, all-presence, and all-wisdom — are attributed to it. “This Principle of Being is regarded as non-material and spiritual in its nature. It is thought of as Pure SPIRIT. The essence of Spirit being regarded as MIND, the Principle of Being is spoken of as Universal Mind. Its substance is regarded as Mental Substance. Its power is regarded as Mental Power. From this arises the statement that ‘All is Mind,’ including the manifestation, emanation, or expression, of Mind. “This Principle of Being is held to be ONE and one only. There being nothing in existence other than this One Principle, the universe must be regarded as necessarily an emanation, manifestation, or expression of the One Principle of Being. And, we, being a part of the universe, must also be an emanation, expression, or manifestation of that One Principle of Being. There is nothing else for us to be. Moreover, the One Principle of Being must be immanent in everything, in different degrees of expression and manifestation. “Therefore, in the degree that man is able to express and manifest this indwelling power must be his individual power. There is no other power to be; no other place from which it may be drawn. From this arises the simple but clear definition of New Thought: “The recognition, realization, and manifestation of the God in me.” “New Thought holds that our mental states, attitudes, ideas, images, and actions determine our mental and physical conditions and status ... . Not only is our character the result of our thoughts, but so also is our environment, our health, our physical condition, our degree of success and attainment. “Health, Happiness, and Prosperity belong to man by right, and may be realized by his recognition, realization and manifestation of the Principle within him, by the proper exercise of his mental powers. Here then we find what makes the New Thought new. It is the practical application of these world-old truths. (New Thought) has harnessed the spiritual forces, just as it has the material forces, and pressed them into service in the affairs of man. It has placed within the hands of man the machinery for working out his own destiny — for mastering his own fate. It has discarded the old idea that man is a “worm of the dust,” a creature of Fate, and a pawn of Circumstance. It bids him lift his head and gaze with unfaltering eyes upon the universe saying: I am the Captain of my Soul, the Master of my Fate, the Ruler of Circumstances!” Contemplations Perhaps the primary focus of what I call “New Thought” can be found in these contemplations: There is a Presence and Power within me. It is all-knowing, all-caring, all-loving, all-powerful. It is the Completeness of the universe individualized as me. It is who I am. It is what I am. It is God as me now. God IS. God is the one universal Presence and Power, the Cosmic Heart of Love, expressing as all that is good, true, and beautiful in life. I am that Expression. I and the Spirit of God are one. I am God being me, and God loves Itself as me. This excerpt is taken from the new book Nothing Is Too Good To Be True by John Randolph Price. It is published by Hay House, Inc., and is available at bookstores, by phone 800-654-5126, or via the internet at www.hayhouse.com. |
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