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With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:36am On Mar 03, 2021 |
With the adepts is a book written by Franz Hartman in the year 1910. It was actually written from notes passed down to him from a friend; about his experiences on the astral plane. In the book the protagonist(whose remains unnamed); travels to the spriritual land of the Adepts. An adept is a spiritually developed man; or on rare ocassions woman; that expresses powers and qualities that makes him/her far more developed than the average human being. In the book they discuss; a lot of things. They are not limited to; but Include: 1) What is man? 2) The path to spiritual progress 3) The greatest obstacles to man's spiritual progress. 4) Some Spiritual laws. 5) How to fix some of the problems that plagues today's society. The wisdom contained in this book is valuable now; as it was a 100 years ago. Link to download pdf file: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/ebooks1/franz-hartmann/with-the-adepts/with-the-adepts.pdf |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:40am On Mar 03, 2021 |
Some excerpts from the book: As the present civilisation now stands, there are two methods adopted for the education of the people. One is by means of what is called Science, the other by means of what is called Religion. As far as science is concerned, her deductions and speculations are based upon observation and logic. Her logic may be good enough; but her powers of observation, upon which the fundamentals of her logic rest, are restricted to her very imperfect faculties of sensual perception, and therefore your science is based entirely upon external illusions, and is consequently a superficial and illusive science. Knowledge of the inner life of nature is far more important than the study of external phenomena. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:43am On Mar 03, 2021 |
"The power of the imagination is yet too little known to mankind, else they would better beware of what they think. If a man thinks a good or an evil thought, that thought calls into existence a corresponding form or power within the sphere of his mind, which may assume density and become living, and continue to live long after the physical body of the man who created it has died. It will accompany his soul after death, because the creations are attracted to their creator." Every thought calls into existence the form or power of which we think; but these things have no life until life is infused into them by the Will. If they do not receive life from the Will, they are like shadows and soon fade away. If this were not the case, men could never read of a crime without mentally committing it, and thereby creating most vicious Elementals. You may imagine evil deeds of all kinds; but, unless you have a desire to perform them, the creations of your imagination obtain no life. But if you desire to perform them, if your will is so evil that you would be willing to perform them if you had the external means to do so, then it may perhaps be as bad for you as if you had actually committed them, and you create thereby a living although invisible power of evil. It is the Will which endows the creations of imagination with life, because Will and Life are fundamentally identical." |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:45am On Mar 03, 2021 |
"Thus intellectual man, growing up protected by fashion and friends in a school, college, university, or perhaps within the walls of the convent, finds himself isolated from contrary influences and meets with but little resistance. Crowded together with those who think like him, he lives and thinks like the others. Over their heads waves the banner of some accepted authority, and upon that banner are inscribed certain dogmas in which they believe without ever daring to doubt their veracity. There they grow, throwing upon each other the shadow of their ignorance, and each prevents the others from seeing the sunlight of truth. There they cram their brains with authorised opinions, learning details of our illusory life which they mistake for the real existence; they become top-heavy, for all the energy which they receive from the universal fountain of life goes to supply the brain; the soul is left without supply; the strength of character, of which the heart is the seat, suffers; the intellect is overfed and the spirit is starved. Thus they may grow up and become proud of their knowledge; but perhaps some day new and strange ideas appear on the mental horizon, a wind begins to blow, and down tumbles the banner upon which their dogmas have been inscribed, and their pride tumbles down with it. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:48am On Mar 03, 2021 |
"What the disciple ought to seek is to strengthen his character, which
constitutes his real individuality; keeping it always in harmony with the law
of divine wisdom and love. A man without strength of character is without
true individuality, without self-reliance, moved only by the emotions which
arise in his mind and which belong to powers foreign to his divine nature.
"Only after the attainment of a certain state of maturity, life in a solitude,
isolated from contrary influences, becomes desirable and useful, and those
who retire from the world as long as they need the world are attempting to
ascend to the kingdom of heaven by beginning at the top of the ladder. Let
him who needs the world remain in the world. The greater the temptations
are by which he is surrounded, the greater will be his strength if he
successfully resists. Only he who can control his mind and within his own
mental sphere create the conditions which his spirit requires, is independent
of all external conditions and free. He who cannot evolve a world within his
own soul needs the external world to evolve his soul. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:49am On Mar 03, 2021 |
Unspiritual men, therefore, who retire from the world because they are afraid of the world, cannot be considered to be heroes who have renounced the world; they deserve rather to be regarded as cowards who have deserted their ranks at the beginning of the battle with life. Such people sometimes retire into convents for the purpose of having a comfortable life,and in addition to that a ticket to heaven. They imagine they do a service to God by leading a harmless and useless life; for which imaginary service they expect to obtain a reward at the end of life. But the reward which they will receive will also exist merely in their imagination. As the sensualist wastes his time in the prosecution of useless pleasures, so the bigot wastes his time in useless ceremonies and prayers. The actions of the former are instigated by a desire for sensual pleasure in this life, those of the latter by the hope for pleasure in another life; both are acting for the purpose of gratifying their own selfish desires. I am unable to see any essential difference between the motives and morals of the two. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:52am On Mar 03, 2021 |
The great bulk of those things which are said to be the necessities of life are only artificially created necessities, and millions of people lived and attained old age long before many of the things which our modern civilisation considers as absolutely necessary had been discovered or invented. The term 'necessity' has a relative meaning; and to a king a dozen of palaces, to a nobleman a carriage and four, may appear as much a necessity as to a beggar a bottle of whisky, or to a fashionable man a new swallowtail coat. To get rid at once of all such fancied necessities and the trouble which is imposed upon us to attain them, the shortest and surest way is to rise above such necessities and to consider them not to be necessary at all. Then a great amount of our energy would become free, and might be employed for the acquisition of that which is really necessary, because it is eternal and permanent, while that which serves merely temporal purposes ends in time. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 11:55am On Mar 03, 2021 |
The majority of evil-doers do evil, not for the love of evil, but for the purpose of attaining some selfish purpose. The villains who are on the road to Black Magic do evil because they love it, in the same sense as those who are on the road to true adeptship perform good merely because they love good. But whether man performs good or evil acts, a constant or frequent repetition of such acts causes him finally to perform them instinctively, and thus his own nature becomes gradually either identified with good or with evil. He who merely tortures a fly for the sake of torturing it, and because he is pleased to do so, is farther progressed on the road to villainy and absolute evil with consequent destruction, than he who murders a man because he imagines it to be necessary for his own protection that he should murder him. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 12:03pm On Mar 03, 2021 |
What will it serve you, if your head is full of speculations about the details of the phenomenal illusions of life, and you become a senile slowpoke in your old age? What will it serve you, roaming about the world and gratifying your curiosity in regard to its details, when, after that world has vanished, they for ever disappear from your memory? Perhaps it would be better for the learned if they knew less of scientific theories and had more soul knowledge. It would be better if they had fewer theories and more experience. If they were to employ, for instance, some of their time and energy for the development of the spiritual power of clairvoyance, instead of spending it to find out the habits of some species of African monkey, they would fare better by it. If they were to obtain the power to heal the sick by the touch of their hands, instead of seeking new methods to poison humanity by inoculations of injurious substances, humanity would be the gainer. There are thousands of people who work hard all their lives, without accomplishing anything which is really useful or enduring. There are thousands who labour intellectually or mechanically to perform work which had better be left undone. There are vastly more people engaged in undermining and destroying the health of man than in curing his ills, more engaged in teaching error than in teaching the truth, more trying to find that which is worthless than that which is of value; they live in dreams and their dreams will vanish; they run after money, and the money will remain while they themselves perish and die. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 12:04pm On Mar 03, 2021 |
"The obstacles which arise from the external world are intimately connected
with those from the inner world, and cannot be separated; because external
temptations create inward desires, and inward desires call for external
means for gratification. There are many people who do not crave for the
illusions of life, but who have not the strength to resist them; they have a
desire to develop spiritually and to gain immortality, but employ all of their
time and energy for the attainment of worthless things, instead of using it
to dive down into the depths of the soul to search for the priceless pearl of
wisdom. Thousands of people have not the moral courage to break loose
from social customs, ridiculous habits, and foolish usages, which they
inwardly abhor, but to which they nevertheless submit because they are
customs and habits to act against which is considered to be a social crime.
Thus thousands sacrifice their immortality to the stupid goddess of fashion. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 12:06pm On Mar 03, 2021 |
Who dares to break loose from the bondage imposed upon him by the fashion which at present dominates religious thought? Who has the courage to incur the sneers of the slowpoke, the ridicule of the ignorant, the laughter of the fool, and gain thereby a light of whose existence those who live in eternal darkness know nothing? The vast majority of people drown the voice of reason and dance with the fool. Rather than have their vanity suffer, they allow the spirit to starve; rather than be crucified and rise into immortal life, they submit to the galling chain; they lose their appreciation of liberty, and, becoming used to their chains, begin to love them and impose them upon others. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 12:07pm On Mar 03, 2021 |
The continual rush after more money, more comfort, more pleasure, after we already possess all we require, which characterises our present civilisation, is not necessarily a sign of viciousness and moral depravity; but it is rather caused by the instinctive impulse, inherent in the constitution of man, to reach some higher and better condition, which expresses itself on the mundane plane. Man intuitively knows that, no matter how rich in money or fame he may be, he has not yet reached a state in which he will be contented to rest; he knows that he must still keep on striving for something, but he does not know what that something is. Not knowing the higher life, he strives for more of those things which the lower life affords. Thus we may see a bug or a butterfly falling into a lake, and in its vain efforts to save itself from drowning swimming away from the shore, because it does not know in which direction the means for salvation exist. The curse of the world and the root of all evil is ignorance. The curse of man is his ignorance of his higher nature and final destiny, and the efforts of a true system of religion and science ought to be above all to remove this stupidity. |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 12:13pm On Mar 03, 2021 |
It is idle for the priests to assert that they can forgive sins, or that sins can be forgiven through them. If they do not possess any spiritual powers, we cannot believe that they are able to communicate them to others; and if they convey such powers to others, where are their effects to be seen? Do the ignorant become wise after having been baptized with water? Do those who have submitted to the ceremony of confirmation obtain firmness of faith? Does the sinner become innocent after having the load taken off from his conscience by means of absolution? Can our clergymen change the laws of nature? Can they by any external ceremony cause the growth of an inner principle? or does he who enters a church an animal, come out an animal still? How can any one be a true spiritual guide who has no spiritual powers, and who, perhaps, does not even know that such powers exist? What would you think of a surgeon who knew nothing whatever of anatomy? what of a physician who did not know his patient? what of a blind painter, a deaf musician, an slowpoke mathematician? What shall we think of a physician of the soul who knows nothing at all about the soul or its attributes, who has never seen it, and is merely of the opinion that it exists? Have we not a right to doubt the usefulness of such a physician, and exclaim with Shakespeare-- "Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it"? |
Re: With The Adepts by Nobody: 1:08pm On Mar 05, 2021 |
If we only look at the mysteries of nature by the light of
wisdom, with which each human being, except an idiot, has been endowed
by nature at the time of his birth. But if in the place of the sun of divine
wisdom, the artificial candlelight of false logic, sophistry, and speculation
has been lit by irrational education, man steps out of his natural state and
becomes unnatural. The images of the eternal truths--which were mirrored
in his mind while he was a child and innocent, and not sufficiently
intellectually developed to understand them--become, by the time that his
intellect is developed, so distorted and perverted by prejudices and
misconceptions that their original forms are no more recognisable, and,
instead of seeing the real, man only sees the hallucinations which his fancy
has created." |
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