Hello friends, today I want to talk about something weird: spiritual elitism. Cause you see a lot of people, they talk about Enlightenment and Awakening and Kundalini and "trust me bro, this time for real bro, ego death for sure bro," but there's nothing really exceptional about them. So what do I mean by initiation? Clearly I'm talking about something different.
An initiate compared to a normal human is like comparing a butterfly to a caterpillar. Imagine if you will a great ladder of being, where each of the rungs represents a different level. On one rung you have plants, the next animals, then humans. What does it take to truly step from that rung of humanity to the one above it? This is the real question asked by people who are truly seeking spiritual Evolution.
So how do we begin? Well, with the most general education possible. It is good to have general knowledge, not just of esotericism but history, philosophy, psychology, and many other subjects. What should be noted is in this first basic requirement lays a trap. You see, as seekers we all need an open mind, a broad horizon, but what we need most is intuition, a discernment that allows us to close all doors that will lead us off the path.
Now before we get too ahead of ourselves, I could already hear the followers of Renee Ganan saying, "What about a teacher? Don't we need an initiator to become initiates?" Well, yes, but also no. You see, Renee gunan is technically correct, but he's also old and boring and I don't like him. Think of it like this: initiation is like the growth or cultivation of a plant from a seed. For that seed to grow, it needs proper soil and nourishment. It needs proper water—not too much, not too little. It needs the right amount of sun—not too much, not too little. If we are that seed, then we need soil: a proper institution. We need water: the proper teachings. And we need the Sun: an initiator.
So that's it then? Without these things, initiation is surely impossible? Well then, I'll will ask you: how did Jakob Böhme gain initiation? How did Ibn Arabi gain initiation? How did the first men achieve initiation? There are very curious things in this world, and while it is definitely not helpful to consider ourselves always the exception to the rule, it must be noted that there is some possibility. I don't want to lay down a wheelchair ramp and say we're all going to make it. Even when there were institutions and teachers around, initiation was always seen as something exceptional. What we seek has always been for the few, and if we fail, May our bodies become stepping stones for those who come after, seeking what we sought.
So what next? Well, next I would like to refer to a piece of literature: the book Fall of Spirituality. This book is very peculiar, for it is not a book but a tool. The author uses the method of negation and goes through certain contemporary schools and systems and shows that they're not really worth your time. But what interests us in this book is chapter 10, the Final Chapter, where instead the author—instead of negating—then tells us, well, you know what he likes. The systems he chooses are peculiar but not unknown to us. He lays out these four systems and teaches as a place where you can find elements of initiation and high magic that are real and still living. These four master are, of course, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, Eliphas Levi, Gustav Meyrink, and Giuliano Kremmerz. Each of these four Masters deserves their own video, but for the sake of the current topic, I will only touch on each, starting from the last.
We have Giuliano Kremmerz, the founder of a Hermetic Magic School in Italy. It should be noted that the magic taught in this school was primarily used to heal, as it was seen that, well, the magic to heal is the least likely form of magic to lead you to Black Magic. Other than this, the deeper you went, the more the magic turned from natural magic to a higher celestial magic—perhaps working with angels—and then even to theurgic art. And what was the end goal of all of this magical practice? Well, nothing less than immortality, of course: the creation of a new god. Kremmerz believed that within us was the true man that we sculpted throughout our life, and when we die, this true man is released. In essence, a man is an egg—mere potential. This potential is either wasted or developed.
Now moving on to Gustav Meyrink. This is a curious one because recent scholarship has revealed more about his life in the anglo-speaking world. The only thing that was known about Meyrink was his novels, which although esoteric, are not necessarily explicit instruction manuals of initiation. There is one single essay written by Meyrink called The Doctrine of Awakening, but once again, besides this, nothing else was really known about him. So apparently Gustav Meyrink was a part of a secret circle of Rosicrucians who focused on the philosophical teachings of Jakob Böhme but also the practice, the techniques of the Masonic Master King. Nonetheless, what we glean from Meyrink's Doctrine—from what we have—it seems that Meyrink believed that God was merely a level of consciousness that man can attain. Consciousness must be attained, must be awakened, must be activated by integrating it somehow within the body, and that those who are able to do this attain immortality—that is, they are awake after death. He seemed to believe in an afterlife but not one populated by the Dead. The only ones who lived in the afterlife were those who awoke in this life, which now connects us neatly to the doctrine of Eliphas Levi, the master magician.
Eliphas Levi is by now a legend in the western occult scene, and his influence can still be felt. This man, a strange mixture of socialism and catholicism, tried many things in his life, but here I will relay a strange story of him invoking Apollonius of Tyana. In respect of brevity, the essence of his invocation was thus: he dressed up in his ritual G, he lit much incense in the room that had filled with smoke, and he began his invocation with his sword pointing forward. He began to see a distortion in the Smoke of the incense. A voice that was not his own spoke in his head: "Put down on your sword." His sword arm grew heavy as cement and involuntarily descended. In this panicked state of great trepidation, the distortion in the incense became clear, and he saw a figure. This figure was cloaked, old, and worn. Remembering his purpose, he asked the vision for knowledge. It is said at this point he fainted and had a disturbed nightmarish dream. When he awoke, he realized in retrospect within that dream was embedded the answer to his question. He had done it: a successful invocation. Though what disturbed him about the experience afterwards wasn't anything in the experience but the fact that the apparition itself looked old, worn, and tormented.
You see, via Levi's own reading, whenever apollonia was described physically, he was always described as handsome and regal looking. To his mind, the apparition that he summoned could not be Apollonius. So who was it then? He went back to his studies and through an obscure manuscript concluded that at the end of Apollonius's life, he was tortured to death. It was through this finding that Levi crystallized the belief that the earth itself had a kind of memory, an abyssal current that upon your death you are imprinted on, or an image of you is recorded, and it is this image that is summoned in seances. As such, your true essence returns to its source, its ocean, its undifferentiated nature. Think of it like this: you get a piece of paper, and you leave a dab of ink on a part of the paper, and when you fold to the paper in half, what happens? That ink blot is doubled. Now tear the paper in half and do away with one half or the original half, and what do you have? You have a copy. That is basically what happens when people die. Their Essence leaves, and their image is recorded in the memory of the earth. This memory sleeps until it is summoned, and when it is summoned, it has all of the memories of that individual up until its final moments and nothing more. It was Levi's belief that through the practice of magic, the magus will be formed: the one who can survive this process, to be immortalized—not to lose their essence back into the ocean and not to merely become an image recorded by the earth.
And now we come to the final remarkable man: George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. Geri Berie has the oddest system out of all of these gentlemen. For a start, there seems to be no extra normal phenomenological perceptions in his system—that is, no visions, no imagination, no clairvoyance or the development of that. His focus seems to lie in personal development, and this is something interesting because it should be noted that personal development and spiritual development are not the same thing. Too many people get those things mixed up. That being said, you cannot be a loser and be an initiate at the same time. So although personal development is not spiritual development, you do need personal development if you want to spiritually develop. So the focus is on balancing the human, on creating an inner equilibrium so that everything can be integrated in the individual. Once inner equilibrium is established, then there is a shift from personality to essence, and this is where things get esoteric.
You see, your essence, through development, then becomes a sort of a soil for something new to be born, and for Gurdjieff, this new birth is of course the astral body: the thing that allows your consciousness to survive death. To Gurdjieff, this astral body was certainly a luxury most people do not have it. Most people become food for the moon.
And so, my friends, I hope if you've been listening, you can see the pattern that emerges through contrast. You can see the thread that runs through all of these systems. The essence of initiation is immortality—but not a vein immortality of the physical body, something far deeper. It is a development of or within the consciousness to make it perpetual, so that you never sleep, you never dream, you never forget, and in so doing, you never die either. Indeed, initiation is a type of death that leads to deathlessness. This is how remarkable an initiate truly is. If you become an initiate, if you truly awaken in this manner, you are a solar human. You no longer belong to the lunar masses. You become a being whose chronology stretches beyond time and space.
I once again turn to the book Fall of Spirituality, for I have not unveiled or spoken about everything in it—especially that final chapter on initiation and high magic. There is much in there to be pondered, especially the description of initiation from the inside—that is to say, the uncovering of psychic layers until an inner memory is differentiated. This points to one of the main qualities of an initiate: memory. For an initiate doesn't just have one memory. They have, yes, their mundane memory, but they also have an inner memory, an other memory, and unlike us, they have access to it. That is why it is said when you look into the eyes of an initiate, you see the eyes of eternity staring back at you.
Now, thank you, my good friend, for listening to the ramblings of this seeker. May even though we are divided by many physical miles, may we meet one day in that eternal land.
Richard Ruach
Andreas
Hello friends, today I want to talk about something weird: spiritual elitism. Cause you see a lot of people, they talk about Enlightenment and Awakening and Kundalini and "trust me bro, this time for real bro, ego death for sure bro," but there's nothing really exceptional about them. So what do I mean by initiation? Clearly I'm talking about something different.
An initiate compared to a normal human is like comparing a butterfly to a caterpillar. Imagine if you will a great ladder of being, where each of the rungs represents a different level. On one rung you have plants, the next animals, then humans. What does it take to truly step from that rung of humanity to the one above it? This is the real question asked by people who are truly seeking spiritual Evolution.
So how do we begin? Well, with the most general education possible. It is good to have general knowledge, not just of esotericism but history, philosophy, psychology, and many other subjects. What should be noted is in this first basic requirement lays a trap. You see, as seekers we all need an open mind, a broad horizon, but what we need most is intuition, a discernment that allows us to close all doors that will lead us off the path.
Now before we get too ahead of ourselves, I could already hear the followers of Renee Ganan saying, "What about a teacher? Don't we need an initiator to become initiates?" Well, yes, but also no. You see, Renee gunan is technically correct, but he's also old and boring and I don't like him. Think of it like this: initiation is like the growth or cultivation of a plant from a seed. For that seed to grow, it needs proper soil and nourishment. It needs proper water—not too much, not too little. It needs the right amount of sun—not too much, not too little. If we are that seed, then we need soil: a proper institution. We need water: the proper teachings. And we need the Sun: an initiator.
So that's it then? Without these things, initiation is surely impossible? Well then, I'll will ask you: how did Jakob Böhme gain initiation? How did Ibn Arabi gain initiation? How did the first men achieve initiation? There are very curious things in this world, and while it is definitely not helpful to consider ourselves always the exception to the rule, it must be noted that there is some possibility. I don't want to lay down a wheelchair ramp and say we're all going to make it. Even when there were institutions and teachers around, initiation was always seen as something exceptional. What we seek has always been for the few, and if we fail, May our bodies become stepping stones for those who come after, seeking what we sought.
So what next? Well, next I would like to refer to a piece of literature: the book Fall of Spirituality. This book is very peculiar, for it is not a book but a tool. The author uses the method of negation and goes through certain contemporary schools and systems and shows that they're not really worth your time. But what interests us in this book is chapter 10, the Final Chapter, where instead the author—instead of negating—then tells us, well, you know what he likes. The systems he chooses are peculiar but not unknown to us. He lays out these four systems and teaches as a place where you can find elements of initiation and high magic that are real and still living. These four master are, of course, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, Eliphas Levi, Gustav Meyrink, and Giuliano Kremmerz. Each of these four Masters deserves their own video, but for the sake of the current topic, I will only touch on each, starting from the last.
We have Giuliano Kremmerz, the founder of a Hermetic Magic School in Italy. It should be noted that the magic taught in this school was primarily used to heal, as it was seen that, well, the magic to heal is the least likely form of magic to lead you to Black Magic. Other than this, the deeper you went, the more the magic turned from natural magic to a higher celestial magic—perhaps working with angels—and then even to theurgic art. And what was the end goal of all of this magical practice? Well, nothing less than immortality, of course: the creation of a new god. Kremmerz believed that within us was the true man that we sculpted throughout our life, and when we die, this true man is released. In essence, a man is an egg—mere potential. This potential is either wasted or developed.
Now moving on to Gustav Meyrink. This is a curious one because recent scholarship has revealed more about his life in the anglo-speaking world. The only thing that was known about Meyrink was his novels, which although esoteric, are not necessarily explicit instruction manuals of initiation. There is one single essay written by Meyrink called The Doctrine of Awakening, but once again, besides this, nothing else was really known about him. So apparently Gustav Meyrink was a part of a secret circle of Rosicrucians who focused on the philosophical teachings of Jakob Böhme but also the practice, the techniques of the Masonic Master King. Nonetheless, what we glean from Meyrink's Doctrine—from what we have—it seems that Meyrink believed that God was merely a level of consciousness that man can attain. Consciousness must be attained, must be awakened, must be activated by integrating it somehow within the body, and that those who are able to do this attain immortality—that is, they are awake after death. He seemed to believe in an afterlife but not one populated by the Dead. The only ones who lived in the afterlife were those who awoke in this life, which now connects us neatly to the doctrine of Eliphas Levi, the master magician.
Eliphas Levi is by now a legend in the western occult scene, and his influence can still be felt. This man, a strange mixture of socialism and catholicism, tried many things in his life, but here I will relay a strange story of him invoking Apollonius of Tyana. In respect of brevity, the essence of his invocation was thus: he dressed up in his ritual G, he lit much incense in the room that had filled with smoke, and he began his invocation with his sword pointing forward. He began to see a distortion in the Smoke of the incense. A voice that was not his own spoke in his head: "Put down on your sword." His sword arm grew heavy as cement and involuntarily descended. In this panicked state of great trepidation, the distortion in the incense became clear, and he saw a figure. This figure was cloaked, old, and worn. Remembering his purpose, he asked the vision for knowledge. It is said at this point he fainted and had a disturbed nightmarish dream. When he awoke, he realized in retrospect within that dream was embedded the answer to his question. He had done it: a successful invocation. Though what disturbed him about the experience afterwards wasn't anything in the experience but the fact that the apparition itself looked old, worn, and tormented.
You see, via Levi's own reading, whenever apollonia was described physically, he was always described as handsome and regal looking. To his mind, the apparition that he summoned could not be Apollonius. So who was it then? He went back to his studies and through an obscure manuscript concluded that at the end of Apollonius's life, he was tortured to death. It was through this finding that Levi crystallized the belief that the earth itself had a kind of memory, an abyssal current that upon your death you are imprinted on, or an image of you is recorded, and it is this image that is summoned in seances. As such, your true essence returns to its source, its ocean, its undifferentiated nature. Think of it like this: you get a piece of paper, and you leave a dab of ink on a part of the paper, and when you fold to the paper in half, what happens? That ink blot is doubled. Now tear the paper in half and do away with one half or the original half, and what do you have? You have a copy. That is basically what happens when people die. Their Essence leaves, and their image is recorded in the memory of the earth. This memory sleeps until it is summoned, and when it is summoned, it has all of the memories of that individual up until its final moments and nothing more. It was Levi's belief that through the practice of magic, the magus will be formed: the one who can survive this process, to be immortalized—not to lose their essence back into the ocean and not to merely become an image recorded by the earth.
And now we come to the final remarkable man: George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. Geri Berie has the oddest system out of all of these gentlemen. For a start, there seems to be no extra normal phenomenological perceptions in his system—that is, no visions, no imagination, no clairvoyance or the development of that. His focus seems to lie in personal development, and this is something interesting because it should be noted that personal development and spiritual development are not the same thing. Too many people get those things mixed up. That being said, you cannot be a loser and be an initiate at the same time. So although personal development is not spiritual development, you do need personal development if you want to spiritually develop. So the focus is on balancing the human, on creating an inner equilibrium so that everything can be integrated in the individual. Once inner equilibrium is established, then there is a shift from personality to essence, and this is where things get esoteric.
You see, your essence, through development, then becomes a sort of a soil for something new to be born, and for Gurdjieff, this new birth is of course the astral body: the thing that allows your consciousness to survive death. To Gurdjieff, this astral body was certainly a luxury most people do not have it. Most people become food for the moon.
And so, my friends, I hope if you've been listening, you can see the pattern that emerges through contrast. You can see the thread that runs through all of these systems. The essence of initiation is immortality—but not a vein immortality of the physical body, something far deeper. It is a development of or within the consciousness to make it perpetual, so that you never sleep, you never dream, you never forget, and in so doing, you never die either. Indeed, initiation is a type of death that leads to deathlessness. This is how remarkable an initiate truly is. If you become an initiate, if you truly awaken in this manner, you are a solar human. You no longer belong to the lunar masses. You become a being whose chronology stretches beyond time and space.
I once again turn to the book Fall of Spirituality, for I have not unveiled or spoken about everything in it—especially that final chapter on initiation and high magic. There is much in there to be pondered, especially the description of initiation from the inside—that is to say, the uncovering of psychic layers until an inner memory is differentiated. This points to one of the main qualities of an initiate: memory. For an initiate doesn't just have one memory. They have, yes, their mundane memory, but they also have an inner memory, an other memory, and unlike us, they have access to it. That is why it is said when you look into the eyes of an initiate, you see the eyes of eternity staring back at you.
Now, thank you, my good friend, for listening to the ramblings of this seeker. May even though we are divided by many physical miles, may we meet one day in that eternal land.