It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”[a] 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.
In addition to what Abraxas has written, I wish to emphasize two points. The first point is that along the path of high magic there is no need, in following a discipline, to initially acknowledge the notions of “good” and “evil” in a moral sense. This may be necessary for a passive spirit, in whom the function of command is totally lacking: it is only because he does not find this function in himself that he seeks it elsewhere, wishing to be commanded. A being who is complete and integrated on the basis of being two (as Abraxas mentioned before) can create in himself the power to command and the power to obey, which are both absolute… Abraxas has pointed out that in order for the mystical way to yield good results from an initiatic point of view, it is necessary, at a certain point, to effect a role reversal. This reversal applies to the state in which, once the duality is created, the divine image embodying the higher self stands before the mystic as another being. Interestingly, in Islamic esotericism there is a technical term indicating this change: shath. Shath literally means “exchange of roles” and expresses the point in which the mystic absorbs the divine image so fully that he feels it as his own self, and feels his earlier self as something foreign. The divine image then speaks from him. In Islam there are “sure signs” to recognize cases in which the shath has objectively occurred, as opposed to just being a matter of individual self suggestion (e.g., the case of Ibn Arabi). However, we should warn that esoteric truths that are experienced in this new condition must be kept secret, since they are dangerous for simply believers. Apparently, the death suffered by El Hallaj, who is nevertheless regarded as one of the main teachers of esoteric Islam (Sufism), was due to the violation of this precept. – Julius Evola and the Ur Group, Introduction to Magic, pg. 57-58, Inner Traditions
Niffari, who incarnates esotericism in the truest sense of the word, and not a will- conditioned and still largely exoterist pre-esotericism, bore the following testimony: “Allah said to me: Formulate thy petition to me thus: Lord, how must I attach myself firmly to Thee so that on the day of my judgement Thou wilt not punish me or turn Thy face from me? Then I (Allah) shall answer thee saying: Attach thyself to the Sunna in thine outward doctrine and practice, and attach thyself in thine inward soul to the Gnosis which I have given thee, for thou art one of those to whom I speak; thou hearest me, and thou knowest that thou hearest me, and thou seest that I am the source of all things”. The commentator on the passage remarks that the Sunna has a general application and that it makes no distinction between the seekers of a created reward and the seekers of the essence, and that it contains what any and every person may have need of. Another saying of Niffari: “And he said to me: My exoteric (zharari) revelation does not support my esoteric (batini) revelation”. And yet another, of an abrupt symbolism that needs to be understood: “The good actions of the pious man are as the bad actions of the privileged of Allah.” Which indicates as clearly as possible the relativity of certain elements of the Sunna and the relativity of the cult of the intermediate [strictly moral] Sunna. – Frithjof Schuon, Understanding Islam, pg. 99
From a slightly different point of view, it might be objected that a quintessential and consequently very free interpretation of the Sunna could only concern a few Sufis and not the salikun, the “travelers”. We would say, rather, that this freedom concerns the Sufis insofar as they have transcended the world of forms; but it also concerns the salikun insofar as they follow the path of Gnosis inspired by the perspective that conforms to this path; by the nature of things, they are aware a priori of the relativity of forms, especially of some, so that a social formalism with sentimental undertones cannot be imposed on them. Frithjof Schion, Understanding Islam, pg. 101
God is the Absolute, the One before whom no relativity may even be said to exist. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth, pg.35, HarperOne
Allah denotes at once Godhead and God as the divine person and Creator. It contains, therefore, both the impersonal and personal aspects of the divinity. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth, pg.35, HarperOne
As human beings, we have the ability to reach the state of extinction and annihilation and yet have the conciousness that we are nothing in ourselves and that all being belongs to God. We can reach a state of unitive consciousness prior to bifurcation into object and subject. To reach such a state involves, according to certain Sufis, the three stages mentioned already: annihilation in the spiritual master, who represents the prophet; annihilation in the prophet, whom God has addressed directly; and finally, annihilation in God,. Also, in the divine order there are again three stages, that is, annihilation in Gods acts, in His Names and Qualities, and finally in his essence. That supreme level implies the annihilation of annihilation. (fana al-fana) which is also called subsistence (al-baqa) in God. This is the state that would be called in English spiritual union, although Sufism usually uses other terms. This state also corresponds to what certain other Oriental religious doctrines call the Supreme Identity. In this state one swims in the ocean of Divinity and Unity and could assert with Hallaj:
He am I who I love, He who I love is I, Two spirits in one single body dwelling.
So seest though me, then seest thou Him. And seest though Him, then seest though Us
– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth, pg.135, HarperOne
These readaptations are no more than changes of form, which do not touch the essence of the tradition: with a metaphysical doctrine, only the expression can be modified, in a manner more or less comparable to a translation from one language into another; whatever be the forms it assumes for the sake of expressing itself – insofar as expression is possible – metaphysics remains one, just as truth itself is one. – Rene Guenon, The Essential Rene Guenon, pg 16-17, World Wisdom
Man has passed out of the stage of savagery and become a civilized creature with the development of social consciousness. Civilization is a collective state. In our collective type of life the isolationist is a detriment to himself and a menace to all others. - Manly P Hall, The Secret Destiny of America, pg. 23, Tarcher/Penguin
The Jewish problem will be solved by the willingness of the Jew to conform to the civilization, the cultural background and the standards of living of the nation to which -- by the fact of birth and education -- he is related and should assimilate.
The evil karma of the Jew today [written in 1949] is intended to end his isolation, to bring him to the point of relinquishing material goals, of renouncing a nationality that has a tendency to be somewhat parasitic within the boundaries of other nations, and to express inclusive love instead of separative unhappiness..."(Ibid.)
The wholesale slaughter of the Jews and other “subhuman races” was of virtually no political or economic value to the Third Reich. On the contrary, the holocaust was an expensive and extremely problematic program. Vital resources were diverted from the war effort to the pursuit and execution of isolated, powerless groups of people who posed no real threat to the state. Human resources as well as valuable raw materials were wasted in the design, creation and maintenance of the death camps. There was no earthly reason for all this. It was not logical, not pragmatic. The holocaust could only be considered of value in a strictly metaphysical sense to the Nazis: they actually believed they were engaged in a spiritual struggle of truly divine proportions, that the Jews were the children of Satan – a subhuman species that, through its demonic collaboration with Freemasons and Communists, was intent on destroying the world and delivering its ashes to their lord and master, the father of lies. – Peter Levenda, Unholy Alliance, 363, Continuum
Although this globe filled with the contents of material existence is being hurled through space to ultimate destruction, the secret philosophy of the ancients taught that it was possible for the individual to free himself from the swirling mass and by right of his own divinity break through the shell of the world egg and thereby achieve individual liberation. Upon this hypothesis nearly all the mysteries of ancient antiquity were established, a notable exception being the Jewish which taught that there was no liberation for one apart from all. - Manly P Hall, Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, pg. 85, Tarcher/Penguin
Man wandered hopelessly in the gloom of mortality, living and dying without light of understanding in his servitude to the demiurgus and his host of spirits. At last, the spirit of rebellion entered creation in the form of Lucifer, who in his guise of a serpent tempted man to revolt against the mandates of Jehovah (the demiurgus). – Manly P Hall, Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, pg. 163, Tarcher/Penguin
It is said in holy writ that none shall look upon the God of Israel and live. But Israel’s God was the Lord of another day, and woe unto him who shall turn back from this day to worship the irate gods of yesterday; for he shall parish from the narrowness of his own vision. - Manly P Hall, Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, pg. 238, Tarcher Penguin
The God of tomorrow stand’s forth in all it in its majesty of suns and moons and stars….This God is not hidden behind flowing draperies, nor are his ministers avenging angels. Unmoved by the passing of ages he contemplated the worlds that are his substance, and through his own mind in man seeks to probe the depth of his own reality…For what is the quest of knowledge but the God of man seeking the God in all? God is; man is. Therefore, man is God and God is man. - Manly P Hall, Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, pg. 238, Tarcher Penguin
The early Church recognized, however, the peculiar efficacy of the pagan ceremonials as evidenced by the introduction of the mystery plays; for on the steps of the cathedrals even during the middle ages it was customary to enact episodes from the lives of Jesus and the twelve apostles. These pageantries were ostensibly to assist the ignorant in understanding the profundities of the faith. In reality, however, they were perpetuations of the ancient Gnostic practices which the church fathers outwardly opposed but inwardly accepted. – Manly P Hall, Lectures on Ancient Philosophy, pg. 380, Tarcher/Penguin
Not only is the bond between man and man sealed by the Dionysiac magic: alienated, hostile, or subjugated nature, too, celebrates her reconciliation with her lost son, man. The earth gladly offers up her gifts, and the ferocious creatures of the cliffs and the desert peacefully draw near…Now, with the gospel of world harmony, each man feels himself not only united, reconciled and at one with his neighbor, but one with him, as if the veil of maya had been rent and now hung in rags before the mysterious primal oneness. – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, pg. 17, Penguin Classics
Dionysiac art, too, wishes to convince us of the eternal delight of existence – but we are to seek that delight not in phenomena themselves but behind phenomena. It wishes to acknowledge that everything that comes into being must be prepared to face a sorrowful end. It forces us to look at the terrors of individual existence, yet we are not to be petrified with fear. A metaphysical consolation wrests us momentarily from the bustle of changing forms. For a brief moment we really become the primal essence itself, and feel its unbounded lust for existence and delight in existence. Now we see the struggles, the torment, the destruction of phenomena as necessary, given the constant proliferation of the forms of existence forcing and pushing their way into life, the exuberant fertility of the world will. We are pierced by the raging goad of those torments just as we become one with the vast primal delight in existence and sense the eternity of that delight in Dionysiac ecstasy. For all our pity and terror, we are happy to be alive, not as individuals but as the single living thing, merged with it’s creative delight. – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, pg. 80-81, Penguin Classics
As the creating principle, Brahma is not usually worshiped. Mens aspirations go towards liberation or toward divine contemplation, and this leads them towards Siva or Vishnu. Brahma is worshiped by the angels, the seers, the lords of progeny, who are the entities upon whom rest the management and organization of the material universe. There are, however, representations of Brahma in most temples and his name is invoked in rituals. His image in Puskara, near Ajmeer in Rajputana.
The Skanda Purana (1.1.6; 3.2.9-15;3.1.12) gives a number of reasons why Brahma is not today an object of worship. One of them is that he was condemned by Siva never to be worshiped by mortals because he lied, pretending he had reached the summit of the linga of light. (ibid 1.1.6). - Alain Danielou, The Myths and Gods of India, pg. 235, Inner Traditions International.
Today, Shaivite concepts of spiritual life and Shaivite Yoga techniques are once more considered in Hinduism as the highest forms of religion and thought. In monastic life, the highest degrees of initiation are always Shaivite in character, as is the case in Mahayana Buddhism and even Islamic Sufism, which is derived from it…The data given in the Puranas on the religion, philosophy, rites and holy places of Shaivism have been confirmed by archeological research into the period that can be termed Indian proto-history…The sacred places mentioned are often difficult to identify, although usually they have been preserved by later religions, as for example Mecca (Sanskrit: Makheshvara) whose “black stone”, mentioned in the Puranas, was an emblem of Shiva. – Alain Danielou, Yoga: Mastering the Secrets of Matter and the Universe, pg. 13, Inner Traditions.
The doctrine of the Superman, whose virtue stands “beyond good and evil”, who is at once the flower and the leader and savior of men, has been put forward again and again in the world’s history. A host of names for this ideal occur in Indian literature: he is the Arhat (adept), Buddha (enlightened), Jina (conqueror), Tirthakara (finder of the ford), the Bodhisattva (incarnation of the bestowing virtue), and above all Jivan-mukta (freed in this life), whose actions are no longer good or bad, but proceed from his freed nature. – Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Siva, pg. 116, Dover Publications
The activity of genius is not an obedience to rules, but dedication to what is commanded from within, even thought it should appear evil to all others. – Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Siva, pg. 116, Dover Publications