Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bowen, Robert, "Blavatsky on How to Study Theosophy" Quest 108:4, pg 29-33 

By Robert Bowen 

As the introduction below suggests, these notes have been reprinted often in Theosophical venues, including Theosophy Wiki.

This version was published by the Theosophical Publishing House in 1960. According to TSA archivist Janet Kerschner, “H.S.,” the author of the introduction, was almost certainly Henry Smith, then president of the TSA.

Robert Bowen was born in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1815 and educated in Jesuit schools. He served in the Royal Navy: the signature at the end says he was a commander, but a search of Royal Navy records turns up no Robert Bowen during that period. It has been suggested that he was actually a purser—a naval officer, in any event. He joined the TS in the early 1880s after meeting Anna Kingsford and became a personal pupil of HPB’s in 1889. He died in 1908.

Bowen’s son, Patrick, was born when his father was seventy. He spent a great deal of time in Africa, and was initiated into certain African esoteric groups. In 1969, he published a paper entitled “The Ancient Wisdom in Africa” in Studies in Comparative Religion. The article closely correlates esoteric African and Theosophical doctrines.

Theosophical scholar Michael Gomes considers the evidence for the authenticity of this material “inconclusive.” In an article in the December 2013 issue of The Theosophist, he writes: 

Aside from no one else ever seeing Bowen’s notes [apart from Patrick], there are a number of other difficulties with this material. So far no Robert Bowen has been found in membership records of the time. Most Lodge meetings were only open to members or associate members. The dates given for his association with HPB do not match with what we know of her life at the time.

In a letter in the Archives at Adyar, dated 6 March 1891, Countess Wachtmeister writes: “The Thursday evenings are continued, though HPB is seldom present; in fact, we rarely see her now. She shuts herself up for days together.”

While on 19 April 1891, the date Bowen concludes his meetings with Blavatsky, the Countess writes: “HPB is certainly growing more and more feeble, and she feels that to be able to do any work at all she must be quite alone, so as to enable her to concentrate her energies.”

So there appears to be some discrepancy.

—Ed.  

Introduction

These notes of teachings given by H.P. Blavatsky towards the close of her life have already appeared in print at various times in a number of journals. They were made by Robert Bowen, an elderly naval man who joined Mme. Blavatsky’s circle and questioned her persistently about what attitude a student ought to take towards The Secret Doctrine. He made careful notes of the answers she gave him and subsequently read them over to her to make sure that he had not mistaken her meaning. The notes were later brought to light by Bowen’s son, the late Captain P.G.B. Bowen, who was at the time a member of the Theosophical Society in Dublin, and they were first printed in the January-March 1932 issue of Theosophy in Ireland, just over forty years after they were written. Painstaking enquiries that have since been made in Dublin have failed to bring to light any other similar material from the same source.

Much of the value of the Bowen notes lies in the fact that they contain principles that can be applied not only to the study of The Secret Doctrine but to all Theosophical studies. Repeatedly they assert that any descriptive Theosophy is not to be taken as a necessarily correct picture of the universe. It is rather a secondary pattern, which is brought into being in the course of an experience of a Truth which is beyond words, beyond description and beyond relative values. Such a Theosophy is intended not to portray Truth but to lead towards it.

It will be seen that, by these standards, the value and authority of any descriptive Theosophy are not necessarily to be judged according to whether that Theosophy agrees accurately with scientific facts or principles or with the descriptive Theosophy propounded by some other person. The value of any exposition of Theosophy must lie in the depth of experience to which it can lead the student who is strong enough and daring enough to pass beyond its form or pattern to its occult or hidden reality.

Another piece of advice repeated through the notes is that, for its fuller understanding, any Theosophical teaching ought to be brought into a universal setting. As an aid to this, Mme. Blavatsky strongly recommended that the student should try to gain a deep appreciation of the three fundamental propositions, which are to be found in the proem of The Secret Doctrine.

H.S.

 

The Secret Doctrine and Its Study

HPB was specially interesting upon the matter of The Secret Doctrine during the past week. I had better try to sort it all out and get it safely down on paper while it is fresh in my mind. As she said herself, it may be useful to someone thirty or forty years hence.

First of all then, The Secret Doctrine is only quite a small fragment of the Esoteric Doctrine known to the higher members of the Occult Brotherhoods. It contains, she says, just as much as can be received by the World during this coming century. This raised a question—which she explained in the following way:

“The World” means Man living in the Personal Nature. This “World” will find in the two volumes of the S.D. all its utmost comprehension can grasp, but no more. But this was not to say that the Disciple who is not living in “The World” cannot find any more in the book than the “World” finds. Every form, no matter how crude, contains the image of its “creator” concealed within it. So likewise does an author’s work, no matter how obscure, contain the concealed image of the author’s knowledge. From this saying I take it that the S.D. must contain all that H.P.B. knows herself, and a great deal more than that, seeing that much of it comes from men whose knowledge is immensely wider than hers. Furthermore, she implies unmistakably that another may well find knowledge in it which she does not possess herself. It is a stimulating thought to consider that it is possible that I myself may find in H.P.B.’s words knowledge of which she herself is unconscious. She dwelt on this idea a good deal. X said afterwards: “H.P.B. must be losing her grip,” meaning, I suppose, confidence in her own knowledge. But Y and Z and myself also, see her meaning better, I think. She is telling us without a doubt not to anchor ourselves to her as the final authority, nor to anyone else, but to depend altogether upon our own widening perceptions.

(Later note on above: I was right. I put it to her direct and she nodded and smiled. It is worth something to get her approving smile! — [signed] Robert Bowen.)

At last we have managed to get H.P.B. to put us right on the matter of the study of the S.D. Let me get it down while it is all fresh in mind.

Reading the S.D. page by page as one reads any other book (she says) will only end in confusion. The first thing to do, even if it takes years, is to get some grasp of the “Three Fundamental Principles,” given in the Proem. Follow that up by study of the Recapitulation—the numbered items in the Summing Up to Vol. I (Part I). Then take the Preliminary Notes (Vol. II) and the Conclusion (Vol. II).

H.P.B. seems pretty definite about the importance of the teaching (in the Conclusion) relating to the times of coming of the Races and Sub-Races [see sidebar]. She put it more plainly than usual that there is really no such thing as a future “coming” of races. “There is neither Coming nor Passing, but eternal Becoming,” she says. The Fourth Root Race is still alive. So are the Third and Second and First—that is, their manifestations on our present plane of substance are present. I know what she means, I think, but it is beyond me to get it down in words. So likewise the Sixth Sub-Race is here, and the Sixth Root Race, and the Seventh, and even people of the coming Rounds. After all that’s understandable.

Disciples and Brothers and Adepts can’t be people of the every day Fifth Sub-Race, for the race is a state of evolution.

But she leaves no question but that, as far as humanity at large goes, we are hundreds of years (in time and space) from even the Sixth Sub-Race. I thought H.P.B. showed a peculiar anxiety in her insistence on this point. She hinted at “dangers and delusions” coming through ideas that the New Race had dawned definitely on the World. According to her the duration of a Sub-Race for humanity at large coincides with that of the Sidereal Year (the circle of the earth’s axis—about 25,000 years). That puts the new race a long way off.

We have had a remarkable session on the study of the S.D. during the past three weeks. I must sort out my notes and get the results safely down before I lose them.

She talked a good deal more about the “Fundamental Principle.” She says: If one imagines that one is going to get a satisfactory picture of the constitution of the Universe from the S.D. one will get only confusion from its study. It is not meant to give any such final verdict on existence, but to Lead Towards the Truth. She repeated this latter expression many times.

It is worse than useless going to those whom we imagine to be advanced students (she said) and asking them to give us an “interpretation” of the S.D. They cannot do it. If they try, all they give are cut and dried exoteric renderings which do not remotely resemble the Truth. To accept such interpretation means anchoring ourselves to fixed ideas, whereas Truth lies beyond any ideas we can formulate or express. Exoteric interpretations are all very well, and she does not condemn them so long as they are taken as pointers for beginners, and are not accepted by them as anything more. Many persons who are in, or who will in the future be in the T.S. are of course potentially incapable of any advance beyond the range of a common exoteric conception. But there are, and will be others, and for them she sets out the following and true way of approach to the S.D.

Come to the S.D. (she says) without any hope of getting the final Truth of existence from it, or with any idea other than seeing how far it may lead Towards the Truth. See in study a means of exercising and developing the mind never touched by other studies. Observe the following rules:

No matter what one may study in the S.D. let the mind hold fast, as the basis of its ideation, to the following ideas:

(a) The Fundamental Unity of All Existence. This unity is a thing altogether different from the common notion of unity—as when we say that a nation or an army is united; or that this planet is united to that by lines of magnetic force or the like. The teaching is not that. It is that existence is One Thing, not any collection of things linked together. Fundamentally there is One Being. The Being has two aspects, positive and negative. The positive is Spirit, or Consciousness. The negative is Substance, the subject of consciousness. This Being is the Absolute in its primary manifestation. Being absolute there is nothing outside it. It is All-Being. It is indivisible, else it would not be absolute. If a portion could be separated, that remaining could not be absolute, because there would at once arise the question of Comparison between it and the separated part. Comparison is incompatible with any idea of absoluteness. Therefore it is clear that this fundamental One Existence, or Absolute Being, must be the Reality in every form there is.

I said that though this was clear to me I did not think that many in the Lodges would grasp it. “Theosophy,” she said, “is for those who can think, or for those who can drive themselves to think, not mental sluggards.” H.P.B. has grown very mild of late. “Dumskulls” used to be her name for the average student.

The Atom, the Man, the God (she says) are each separately, as well as all collectively, Absolute Being in their last analysis, that is their Real Individuality. It is this idea which must be held always in the background of the mind to form the basis for every conception that arises from study of the S.D. The moment one lets it go (and it is most easy to do so when engaged in any of the many intricate aspects of the Esoteric Philosophy), the idea of Separation supervenes, and the study loses its value.

(b) The second idea to hold fast to is that There Is No Dead Matter. Every last atom is alive. It cannot be otherwise since every atom is itself fundamentally Absolute Being. Therefore there is no such thing as “spaces” of Ether, or Akasha, or call it what you like, in which angels and elementals disport themselves like trout in water. That’s a common idea. The true idea shows every atom of substance no matter of what plane to be in itself a Life.

(c) The third basic idea to be held is that Man is the Microcosm. As he is so, then all the Hierarchies of the Heavens exist within him. But in truth there is neither Macrocosm nor Microcosm but One Existence. Great and small are such only as viewed by a limited consciousness.

(d) Fourth and last basic idea to be held is that expressed in the Great Hermetic Axiom. It really sums up and synthesizes all the others.

As is the Inner, so is the Outer; as is the Great, so is the Small; as it is above, so it is below: there is but One Life and Law; and he that worketh it is One. Nothing is Inner, nothing is Outer; nothing is Great, nothing is Small; nothing is High, nothing is Low, in the Divine Economy.

No matter what one takes as study in the S.D. one must correlate it with those basic ideas.

I suggest that this is a kind of mental exercise which must be exceedingly fatiguing. H.P.B. smiled and nodded. One must not be a fool (she said) and drive oneself into the madhouse by attempting too much at first. The brain is the instrument of waking consciousness and every conscious mental picture formed means change and destruction of the atoms of the brain. Ordinary intellectual activity moves on well beaten paths in the brain, and does not compel sudden adjustments and destructions in its substance. But this new kind of mental effort calls for something very different—the carving out of “new brain paths,” the ranking in different order of the little brain lives. If forced injudiciously it may do serious physical harm to the brain.

This mode of thinking (she says) is what the Indians call Jnana Yoga. As one progresses in Jnana Yoga, one finds conceptions arising which, though one is conscious of them, one cannot express nor yet formulate into any sort of mental picture. As time goes on these conceptions will form into mental pictures.

This is a time to be on guard and refuse to be deluded with the idea that the new found and wonderful picture must represent reality. It does not. As one works on, one finds the once admired picture growing dull and unsatisfying, and finally fading out or being thrown away. This is another danger point, because for the moment one is left in a void without any conception to support one, and one may be tempted to revive the cast-off picture for want of a better to cling to. The true student will, however, work on unconcerned, and presently further formless gleams come, which again in time give rise to a larger and more beautiful picture than the last. But the learner will now know that no picture will ever represent the Truth. This last splendid picture will grow dull and fade like the others. And so the process goes on, until at last the mind and its pictures are transcended and the learner enters and dwells in the World of No Form, but of which all forms are narrowed reflections.

The True Student of The Secret Doctrine is a Jnana Yogi, and this Path of Yoga is the True Path for the Western student. It is to provide him with sign posts on that Path that The Secret Doctrine has been written.

(Later note: I have read over this rendering of her teaching to H.P.B. asking if I have got her aright. She called me a silly Dumskull to imagine anything can ever be put into words aright. But she smiled and nodded as well, and said I had really got it better than anyone else ever did, and better than she could do it herself.)

I wonder why I am getting all this. It should be passed to the world, but I am too old ever to do it. I feel such a child to H.P.B., yet I am twenty years older than her in actual years.

She has changed much since I met her two years ago. It is marvellous how she holds up in the face of dire illness. If one knew nothing and believed nothing, H.P.B. would convince one that she is something away and beyond body and brain. I feel, especially during these last meetings since she has become so helpless bodily, that we are getting teachings from another and higher sphere. We seem to feel and Know what she says rather than hear it with our bodily ears. X said much the same thing last night.

(Signed) Robert Bowen,

CMDR, R[oyal] N[avy]

19th April, 1891

 

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The Three Fundamental Propositions

From the Proem of The Secret Doctrine

(a) An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable Principle, on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought—in the words of Māndūkya Upanishad, “unthinkable and unspeakable.” [Verse 7.]

To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one Absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause—dimly formulated in the “Unconscious” and “Unknowable” of current European philosophy—is the rootless root of “all that was, is, or ever shall be.” It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is “Be-ness” rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation.

This “Be-ness” is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that Consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best symbolizes change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the one Reality, is also symbolized by the term “The Great Breath,” a symbol sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute—Be-ness—symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity . . .

(b) The eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically “the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing,” called the “manifesting stars,” and the “sparks of Eternity.” “The Eternity of the Pilgrim” is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan). “The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb, flux and reflux.”

This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental Laws of the Universe . . .

(c) The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul—a spark of the former—through the Cycle of Incarnation (or “Necessity”) in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic Law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth Principle—or the over-soul—has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyāni-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric Philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.

From The Secret Doctrine (Wheaton: Quest, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 14–17.

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Root Races

In Theosophical literature, the term Root Race has a specialized meaning. In this context, the word race connotes something quite distinct from the standard dictionary definition. The popular definition of race involves minor physical and cultural variations within the human species.

In Theosophical literature, however, it refers to something altogether different. Specifically, the term Root Race, or race, refers to major developmental phases that occur over time within human consciousness. The first Root Race is said to be that stage at which the most basic level of perception was developed. During the second stage, the ability for active expression was evolved. This was followed by the third stage, characterized by the development of emotion. In the fourth Root Race, the analytical powers of the mind begin to appear. We are now said to be in the Fifth Root Race—the evolutionary phase in which the mind develops its synthesizing powers.

These stages, which are successive, are great evolutionary changes spanning eons of time. All of humanity is said to pass through each of the successive Root Races—with each individual soul incarnating many times at every stage of development.

This item on the Root Races was published with the 1960 TPH version of Bowen’s notes. It was based on the following sources:

The Peopling of the Earth by Geoffrey Barborka and Theosophy: An Introductory Study Course by John Algeo.

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Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Sorkhabi, Rasoul, "Zoroaster: The First Philosopher and His Theosophical Revolution" Quest 108:4, pg 23-28

By Rasoul Sorkhabi

Spiritual teachers may be categorized into personal teachers and teachers of teachers, whose influence permeate the intellectual history of humankind. Zoroaster, whose theosophical doctrines (from the Latin doctrina, “teaching”) and contributions are analyzed here, belongs to the latter category.

When I was a young boy growing up in Iran, we learned only briefly about Zoroaster as the prophet of a religion prevalent in ancient Iran (Persia) before the coming of Islam in the seventh century. Later, while living in India, I came across the Zoroastrian Parsi population, whose ancestors migrated from Iran to the western coasts of India in several waves over the centuries in search of religious and social freedoms. In 1879 H.P. Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott encountered an educated and entrepreneurial group of Parsis in Bombay, some of whom actually helped build the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in India. The vibrance and contribution of the Parsis have continued to our day: the late singer Freddie Mercury, of the rock band Queen, who came from a Parsi family, is probably the best known.

Nevertheless, Zoroastrians currently constitute a small minority in the world, numbering only 100,000 to 200,000. This, however, should not mask the significance of Zoroaster’s teachings. A large number of books on Zoroastrianism range from scholarly translations of the Avesta (Zoroastrian scriptures) to popular introductions to Zoroastrian beliefs and practices.

In this article, I focus on Zoroaster’s philosophical underpinnings in order to explore two specific questions: What was the social and cultural environment in which Zoroaster began his ministry? How did his teachings shape religious thinking?

These questions take us to the heart of Zoroaster’s teachings and uncover a great deal of forgotten history. My basic thesis here is not historical, but the realization that what Zoroaster taught some three millennia ago still pertains to the philosophical discourse, spiritual quest, and social struggles of our time.

Who Was Zoroaster?

Despite a series of Greco-Persian wars in the sixth through the fourth centuries BC, ancient Greek thinkers, including Plato, had high regards for Zoroaster. Zoroaster is a Greek name for Zarathushtra, probably meaning “the owner of golden or yellow (zarath) camels (ushtra).” Zoroaster’s family name was Spitama (“white”), after his ninth ancestor, possibly referring to their skin color. His father was Pourush’aspa (“owner of many horses”) and his mother was Doughdova (“milkmaid”). All these names indicate a pastoral lifestyle.

At age thirty, Zoroaster experienced a revelation that instructed him to be the messenger of divine teachings to his people. He experienced much hardship and rejection. At age forty, however, in the Iranian capital Balkh (in today’s Afghanistan), Zoroaster convinced King Vishtaspa (Goshtasp, “owner of swift horses”) of the truth of his religion. Zoroaster died at age seventy-seven.   

Many scholars estimate that Zoroaster lived in the second millennium before Christ in northeast Iran or Central Asia. Zoroaster’s hymns or the Gathas (Anklesaria, Poor-davood) are included in the Yasna—the oldest part of the Avesta. They have remarkable linguistic resemblance to the Hindu Rig Veda, composed by the “seers” (rishis) in 1500–1000 BC.

From Animism to Monotheism

Zoroaster grew up in a polytheistic and animistic culture of the Aryan tribes. As recorded in the Gathas (Yasna, 33:6), he was a high priest (zaotar). In those days, the population was divided into four classes (similar to the Indian caste system): rulers, priests, warriors, and common people (nomads, ranchers, farmers, and craftsmen). Zoroaster sided with the common people—the poor and the oppressed (drighu, Yasna, 34:5)—and criticized princes (kavi) and priests (karapan) for their violence, corruption, oppression, injustice, and cruelty to people, land, and animals (Yasna, 44:20).

Although Zoroaster knew about the psychedelic plant juice haoma (soma in Sanskrit), his Gathas do not favor its consumption—strikingly different from a large number of hymns in the Rig Veda, which extol soma. Similarly, Zoroaster is not in favor of sacrifices, even though animal sacrifice has been practiced somewhat by Zoroastrians.

The Avesta connects the slaying of the primordial Bull, which was the companion of the First Man (gayo maretan, “living mortal”), to the work of the evil force. From the slaying of the Bull, the Avesta reports, arose all the animals and plants on the earth. In the Gathas, Ga’ush Urva (“cow’s soul”) represents the soul of all animals and plants as well as the earth. Ga’ush Urva complains to God: “Why did you create me? I am crushed by all this anger and violence, and have no protector.” Her prayer is answered, and Zoroaster, “blessed with sweetest words” (poetry), is assigned to be her protector, but Ga’ush Urva objects that a weak man, rather than a strong ruler, is to protect her. Eventually, she agrees to it after learning that Good Mind (vohu manah) is behind Zoroaster (Yasna, 29:1–10). Vohu Manah (bahman in modern Persian) is the link between God and Zoroaster, like the Holy Spirit in Christianity and the archangel Gabriel in Islam.

Zoroaster reinterpreted all the animistic deities related to fire, earth, water, plants, animals, and metals as six archangels (amesha spenta, “immortal brilliant or holy beings”) or divine aspects or powers (yazata, “worthy of veneration”) of the One God. In the latter group, Zoroaster includes several gods previously worshiped, including Mitra (god of light, covenant, love, war, and farming, depending on various cultures and periods) and Anahita (goddess of sky, water, fertility, and purity).

This change from polytheism to monotheism was a paradigm shift in human thought. For one thing, it provided a sense of union and brotherhood among all humans. Zoroaster detached the forces of nature and their associated deities from the violence and brutality committed in their names.   

A number of philosophers and historians of science (Hooykaas, Jaki, and more recently Schellenberg) have noted that science has rapidly progressed in periods or cultures in which the idea of a single wise God is prevalent. Historical cases support this view. Rational philosophy in ancient Greece grew when philosophers were freed from intellectual shackles of the Pantheon gods. The Arabs embraced science and learning after the advent of monotheistic Islam. The founding fathers of the Scientific Revolution in Europe, like Isaac Newton, despite their opposition to the church’s authoritarianism, considered their scientific research as a rational way to understand God’s design in creation.

Why should monotheism promote science? Unlike the belief in many gods in nature, the idea that a single omniscient god has created and designed the universe is compatible with the basic assumptions of science: order, law, unity, and predictability.

Mind Is Deeper than Matter

	Figure 1.The Avestan faravashi (the ideal or spiritual human) is the best-known Zoroastrian symbol, dating back to the fifth century BC. The symbol is found on walls of archeological buildings in Iran as well as modern Zoroastrian fire temples. This illustration, dating from 1947, comes from the town of Taft in Iran.

According to Zoroaster, reality or existence has two aspects or modalities: mainyu (minu in modern Persian), mind, idea or consciousness; and geteh (giti), the physical or material world. The parallel concept in the Rig Veda is the purusha-prakriti pair, as elucidated by Richard Smoley in The Dice Game of Shiva.

The words mind and mental share the same Indo-European roots with the Avestan mainyu and the Sanskrit manas. Another Avestan term for the realm of mainyu is faravashi, the archetypal world where God created all things over 3,000 years before they were manifested on the earth.

Some scholars hold that Plato’s theory of ideal forms or universals was influenced by Zoroastrian teachings (Chroust, Kingsley, Panousi). Plato may have learned about Zoroaster through the Ionian Greek philosophers, particularly Pythagoras (Guthrie, Riedwig) and Heraclitus (Honderich, Preus), who had studied with Zoroastrian magi (priests). Aristotle in his Metaphysics (Book 1, 987) states that Plato had studied the philosophies of Heraclitus and Pythagoras, besides that of Socrates. Indeed, the first generation of Greek philosophers were from Ionia (the western coast of Anatolia in present-day Turkey), which was ruled by the Persian kings (the Achaemenid dynasty) from 540 to 335 BC, when the Persian empire itself was conquered by Alexander the Great. Greek philosophy up to Aristotle was largely developed during that period (Boyce 150–63).

Plato, from age twenty-eight, when his teacher Socrates was put to death in Athens in 399 BC, to age forty, when he returned to Athens to establish his Academy, was traveling and studying. In the Alcibiades, Plato mentions the name of Zoroaster. There are also reports that in the last days of his life, Plato received a Persian magus who had traveled to Athens to visit him (Kingsley). All these indicate Plato’s knowledge of Zoroastrian philosophy.    

The concept of mainyu or faravashi is similar to what contemporary physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking call the Mind of God. Although the scientists use this expression metaphorically, metaphors do indicate some hidden and valid points. Indeed, the relation of mainyu to modern physics goes deeper. Quantum physics has demonstrated that although there are tangible material things at the scale of our normal observation, at subatomic levels the universe is a unified field of vibrations or waves, beyond which we have no knowledge. As we go deeper, matter disappears into “effects” of underlying and mysterious realms. This is also true as we go back in time, to the moment of the big bang. The physical universe thus appears to be an evolutionary manifestation of a fundamental and universal mind. Zoroaster called it spenta mainyu (“benevolent mind”), which is the creative principle of God (Yasna 43:6; 44:7; 51:7).

In The Mysterious Universe, first published in 1930, pioneering astrophysicist Sir James Jeans writes: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter” (Jeans, 186).

Jeans was not and is not alone in this view. In his own generation, physicists like Max Planck, Einstein, Arthur Eddington, Erwin Schrödinger, and Werner Heisenberg were on his side. Science itself has demolished the myth of materialism in the sense that the boundary between matter and nonmatter has become finer and blurred (Davies and Gribbin). Many eminent physicists, philosophers, and neuroscientists today suggest that at the very source and foundation, and in the very fabric of the physical world, lies consciousness or mind. In other words, consciousness does not blindly arise from the accidental assembly of unconscious bits of matter. It is embedded in all of existence and is manifested at various levels in myriad forms and modes. This philosophical view can be traced all the way back to Zoroaster and the Rig Veda.    

For Zoroaster, however, the world is not merely a machine inhabited by a ghost. He felt a sense of immense reverence toward nature. In his religion, the four elements (akhshij)—earth, water, air, and fire—are all sacred and should not be polluted. Writing in the fifth century BC, Herodotus notes: “Persians have a profound reverence for rivers; they will never pollute a river with urine or spittle” (Herodotus, 64). Today, even secular biologists like E.O. Wilson acknowledge that without deeply felt care and reverence for the Creation (Wilson), we cannot solve our ecological crisis.

Lord of Wisdom

Like Sufis, who have ninety-nine names for God, the Avesta lists 101 names for various attributes and aspects of God. Of these, the single name that Zoroaster chose to represent his notion of God is Ahura Mazda (“lord of great knowing or wisdom”). This was indeed a paradigm shift in religious thinking three millennia ago; to this day, it has a modern tone. Astronomer Carl Sagan once said that he would accept the notion of God if God is defined as “the sum total of the physical laws of the universe,” because the fact that “the same laws of physics apply everywhere is quite remarkable” (Sagan, 149–50). Fifty years before Sagan, Einstein had remarked that “the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility . . . The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle” (Einstein, 292).

Of course, Zoroaster did not have a modern understanding of the laws of nature, physical constants, and scientific theories. However, through meditation, he had realized the amazing wisdom underlying and permeating the natural world. Zoroaster praised and celebrated this wisdom. In his Gathas, there are over 200 references to the name of God as Mazda, and indeed the original name for Zoroastrianism is Mazda-yasna (“wisdom celebration”). As Pliny the Elder remarked in his Natural History (8:30), one wonders if this term was the inspiration for the Greek word philosophia (“love of wisdom”), coined by Pythagoras (Kenny, 14).

What is the One that underlies the myriad phenomena in the world? Greek philosophers variously chose one of the four elements as the “first principle” (arche in Greek). Zoroaster did not stop at material monism, and instead underscored a universal benevolent Mind (spenta mainyu) emanating from Ahura Mazda as the primary principle of creation.

We see the influence of Zoroaster’s thinking on Heraclitus of Ephesus, an Ionian philosopher of the fifth century BC who rejected the gods of the Greek pantheon and instead believed in one God, whom he called to sophon (“the wise one”; Kahn). Heraclitus also posited logos (“word, reason, order”) as the creative principle of the world, represented by “ever-living fire” (a Zoroastrian motif) as the first material element, which gives rise to other elements (starting with smoke or air and then water and earth) as well as “warm” life. We similarly find a “central fire” in the Pythagorean cosmological scheme. In the third century AD, the Roman-Egyptian philosopher Plotinus, father of Neoplatonism and author of the Enneads, suggested a similar view: nous or logos (“consciousness” or “mind”) was the first emanation from the One God, from which proceeded the rest of creation.

Figure 2. A sketch of a Zoroastrian fire temple near Baku (now capital of Azerbaijan) included in Thomas Hyde’s 1700 Latin book, Veterum Persarum et Parthorum et Medorum religionis historia (“The History of the Religion of the Ancient Persians, Parthians, and Medes”). Fire is the most sacred Zoroastrian symbol of divine light, wisdom, love, and life; it has a central place in Zoroastrian temples. Moreover, Zoroastrians pray five times a day toward the direction of the sun. This does not, however, mean that they worship fire or the sun, as is wrongly assumed.

In the twelfth century, the Persian Sufi master Sohravardi integrated the Zoroastrian and Neoplatonic ideas in his philosophy of Illuminism (hikmat al-ishraq). He envisioned various levels of “being” as various degrees of “light.” God was the Light of the Lights, and Bahman (vohu manah) was the First Intellect or the First Ray emanating from God. This shows the undercurrent of Zoroaster’s philosophical influence down the ages.     

Zoroaster’s praise of wisdom was not lip service; he truly believed in its power and significance, not only in the universe but also in religion. He recommends, “Listen with your own ears, and with a bright mind choose truth from false creed—each person for his own self, before the Final Judgment comes” (Yasna 30:2).   

Imagine that you are a person living in a restrictive tribe three thousand years ago who hears that you are an intelligent human and free to think and choose. What a sense of dignity and empowerment you might have gained from these words!

Zoroaster uses two terms for the individual mind and wisdom: khratu for rational thinking (reason) and chista for penetrative knowledge (insight). These faculties, bestowed by Ahura Mazda upon all humans, are valuable companions in life, but they must be nurtured through learning and experience.   

Religion Is Goodness

There is a beautiful story about Hillel the Elder, a Jewish sage of the first century BC. He was once challenged by a skeptic if he could teach the entire Torah in one sentence while standing on one foot. Hillel answered: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to another; this is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study” (Talmud, Shabbat 31a).

If you put this question to a Zoroastrian, he or she would say: hu mata (“good or noble thought”), hukhta (“good speech”), and hu varashta (“good action”). Zoroastrians call their religion Beh Dini, “good religion,” not because they consider other religions to be bad, but because a true religion means being good. In the same vein, the Dalai Lama has often said, “My religion is kindness.”

Like in other religions, compassion (mehr, derived from Mithra) is highly praised in Zoroastrianism. Moreover, there is an organic relationship between compassion and goodness. Without good morals and behavior, compassion remains unrealized, abstract, and even perhaps an egoistic claim. Good thought, good words, and good deeds are thus an elegant garment that Zoroaster wishes to put on compassion.  

What is the source of goodness? How do we know what is good? According to the Avesta (Yasna 26:4), the human body (tanu) is born with five internal forces: (1) ahu, life force; (2) daena, knowing through the spiritual eye or conscience; (3) budha, knowing through the senses and mental processes including reason and meditation (comparable to the Sanskrit buddhi); (4) orvran, the soul which is cultivated in life, for better or worse, and is subject to the Final Judgment, and (5) faravashi, the ideal or spiritual human accompanying the body as the guardian angel.

Of these qualities, daena, conscience, in particular guides all humans to know what is good, to be done, and what is bad, to be avoided. Like the body itself, daena, if left unprotected and exposed to destructive forces, cannot fully function. It needs to be nourished through customs, community, practices, and teachings.  

Goodness is closely related to the concept of asha, perhaps the most important Zoroastrian word after the name of God. Asha, which appears 162 times in the Gathas, means “truth” in two different domains. Asha in the universe refers to law and order, which is explored through science. Asha in human affairs refers to righteousness and justice, which is realized through spirituality and social law. The opposite of asha is druj, literally, “lie or false” in a broad sense of the term—dishonesty, injustice, incorrectness, lying, harming and so forth. Druj is to be avoided. Herodotus (63) reports: “Persians consider telling lies more disgraceful than anything else.” In an inscription from the fifth century BC by the Persian emperor Darius I in his capital, Persepolis, we read this prayer: “May Ahura Mazda protect this country from enemy army, from famine, and from the Lie!”

Asha and druj stem from two opposite forces or qualities operating among humans ever since their appearance on the earth: the good force is Spenta Mainyu (benevolent mind), associated with Ahura Mazda, and the evil force is Angra Mainyu (“hostile mind”), personified in Ahriman (the Devil or Satan in Judaism and Islam). Humans, endowed with wisdom, conscience, teachings, and freedom, are engaged in the battle between goodness and evil.

Some may criticize Zoroaster’s thinking as dualistic and polarizing, but there is a sense of social realism in his teaching. The world is a blend of good news and bad news. We see both compassion and cruelty. Which side do you want to be on? This is Zoroaster’s question. In the face of all the ill and evil which we witness and which can indeed be overwhelming, Zoroaster insists that humans are not helpless or powerless: they can take life in their own hands and be on the side of good and light. This progressive way of thinking was indeed a liberating force in Zoroaster’s time; it always is. In his masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche develops this concept as “the will to power.”

The duality of good and evil does not mean that Zoroaster believed in two gods, as is sometimes claimed. Ahriman is not a god. Time and again, Zoroaster uses the analogy of light and darkness for the relationship between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. Darkness is the absence of light.

Dialectical thinking about the operation of opposites and the war of good and evil can be psychologically exhausting and depressing. Heraclitus, who viewed the world as a state of flux and change through the action of opposing forces, was known to be “the weeping philosopher” because of his melancholic views of life and humans (whom he avoided by living on mountains).

Zoroaster, by contrast, maintains an optimistic attitude toward life. He believes in the power of wisdom and work. He believes that truth and goodness eventually win because they are primordial and essential in human nature and have divine origin. Legend has it that when Zoroaster was born, he did not cry but laughed—a gesture of joy and optimism.

In Zoroaster’s life, we find the elements of what Joseph Campbell formulated as the Hero’s Journey. Zoroaster returned from this journey not only as a messenger, but also as a social reformer, poet, and philosopher. Zoroaster calls for both wisdom (mind) and goodness (heart), not separately but in combination—“the path of Good Mind” (Yasna, 34: 13).

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Sources 

Anklesaria, D.T., trans. The Holy Gathas of Zarathustra. Bombay: Rahnuma-e Mazdayasnan Sabha, 1953.

Boyce, M. A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 2: Zoroastrianism under the Achaemenians. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1982.

Chroust, A.H. “The Influence of Zoroastrian Teachings on Plato, Aristotle, and Greek Philosophy in General.” In The New Scholasticism 54, no. 3 (1980): 342–57.

Einstein, Albert. Ideas and Opinions. Translated by Sonja Bergmann. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1982 [1954].

Guthrie, K.S., ed. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes, 1988.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. London: Penguin, 1996.

Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Hooykaas, R. Religion and the Rise of Modern Science. London: Chatto and Windus, 1972.

Jaki, S. The Road of Science and the Ways of God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Jeans, James. The Mysterious Universe. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942.

Kahn, C.H. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Kenny, Anthony. A New History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Kingsley, Peter. “Meetings with Magi: Iranian Themes among the Greeks, from Xanthus of Lydia to Plato’s Academy.” In Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 5 (1995): 173–209.

Panoussi, Erwin. The Influence of Persian Culture and Worldview Upon Plato [in Persian]. Tehran: Iranian Institute of Philosophy, 2002.

Poor-davood, I., trans. Gathas [in Persian]. Tehran: Asatir, 1999.

Preus, Arthur. Historical Dictionary of Ancient Greek Philosophy. Lanham, Mass.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

Riedweg, Christoph. Pythagoras: His Life, Teachings, and Influence. Translated by Steven Rendall. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. 

Sagan, Carl. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God. London: Penguin, 2006.

Schellenberg, J.L. Monotheism and the Rise of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Smoley, Richard. The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2009.

Wilson, E.O. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. New York: Norton, 2006.

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Rasoul Sorkhabi, PhD, is a professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. His life spans both East and West, as he has lived and studied in Iran, India, Japan, and the USA. This is his fourth article for Quest.

 

 

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Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Godwin, Joscelyn, "Meeting a Philosopher " Quest 108:4, pg 18-22

 

By Joscelyn Godwin

This memoir was sketched in 1988 in order to capture the memory of a crucial encounter, and shared with a handful of others who had been present at the same events. Lightly edited and framed, its present purpose is to show that initiation can take forms that owe nothing to institutions, traditions, religions, or orders.

In the fall of 1968, a year that had already made political and cultural history, I first walked into the American Brahman Bookstore on State Street in Ithaca, New York. It was a shabby store, looking more as if someone was moving out, with a few shelves against the walls filled with books on yoga, mysticism, Zen Buddhism, and other subjects then coming into vogue. At a table, two men sat hunched over what appeared to be a horoscope. One of them looked up as I came in: a striking Mediterranean type in his late forties, with a very dark and beady pair of eyes, which he fixed on me as he invited me to look around. I found little there to satisfy my unformed appetite for literary odds and ends, but when his companion left, I could not resist asking the proprietor whether he actually believed in astrology. In a strong Brooklyn accent, he informed me that it wasn’t a case of believing, but of knowing what astrology was and what it wasn’t. I left the store with two books: P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, which looked intriguing, and Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret India, which I remembered having read some years ago, and which the proprietor said I would enjoy.

It was a painter friend who had told me about this new bookstore, and I was eager to share her impressions of the astrologer, who called himself Tony. Sitting among the canvases in her Cornell University studio, we agreed that he was someone quite out of the ordinary, and worth seeing more of. Apparently he was holding evening classes in the bookstore, so there we went.

Before two weeks had passed, I believed in astrology myself, and in much more. Things that I had dabbled with in my teens, like Theosophy, the idea of reincarnation, and C.G. Jung on flying saucers, came flooding back with a new meaning. The oriental art I had loved from childhood began to reveal its spiritual roots. Most of all, I realized that Tony Damiani was a teacher such as my privileged education had never provided.

Tony remembered this first meeting too. He indiscreetly told one of my fellow students that when I appeared in the bookstore, he said to himself: “Here he is again”—implying a link from the past, and not without a certain ambivalence.

I spent January 1969 working on my dissertation in New York City, with Paul Brunton’s The Wisdom of the Overself for company. This book was regarded with holy awe by the coterie that had formed around Tony’s classes, and I was not sure that I should be reading something so advanced so soon. Actually, it was so consonant with my own needs and convictions that I absorbed it like a sponge and formed a lifelong attachment to its author and his philosophy. I liked the photograph of Brunton that hung in the bookstore: such a handsome and aristocratic profile, with a slightly Indian cast to the features that was entirely appropriate. Later I learned that I had been admiring a photograph of J. Krishnamurti, and that Brunton was the bald man with the impériale beard and the lopsided smile who hung next to him. I forthwith grew a small beard and moustache.

As the winter wore on, I discovered more about Tony. When the evening classes came to an end, he would put on a gray uniform and leave to work fifty miles away on the New York State Thruway, taking tickets on the night shift at the Waterloo exit. With him he would take a box of books, in which I remember seeing the original folio volumes of Thomas Taylor’s translations: The Works of Plato (1810) and The Six Books of Proclus, the Platonic Successor, on the Theology of Plato (1816).

Tony’s home was an old farmhouse on Seneca Lake, to which he kindly invited me and my painter friend. There we met his wife, Ella May Damiani, and five of his six sons. The family was all vegetarian. They had lived in Brooklyn until quite recently; Tony had managed a large occult bookstore in Manhattan that I was later to know well as Weiser’s. Some of the books in the Ithaca bookstore were, in fact, sacrificed from the rich esoteric library that Tony had collected during that period. I wish I had had the sense to buy more of them, although even today Proclus is beyond me.

Tony was a memorable raconteur, and we heard of other things in his past that became the stuff of legend. For some years he had been a longshoreman, “to teach my body who’s boss.” During the same period, he had shaved off all his luxurious black hair, having decided that he was too attached to his appearance. He had worked on the New York subway, taking tickets at night—not many of them, for his station was next to a graveyard—and using the time for study and meditation. “I knew I was deeply in when I didn’t hear the trains go by,” he said. Once he was held up at gunpoint, and had quietly handed over the cash before his consciousness registered what had happened. One winter’s day, he sat down on a bench in Central Park and began to meditate; hours later, he found himself under six inches of snow.

These were the kind of stories he would tell to us neophytes; but he told them as if they were of another person, far away and eons ago. What Tony’s inner life had been like, I could not begin to imagine, and I still can’t.

As time went on, more people were lured by the astrology classes at the bookstore. Tony was a master astrologer, his intuition being at its height when interpreting planetary aspects and the Sabian symbols. Once he used my horoscope as the example for a class. That analysis has stuck with me ever since as a guide to objective self-knowledge. Yet astrology of this personal type was only a lure, for what Tony wanted us to learn was philosophy, the “love of wisdom.” For that there were classes on Brunton’s works, which would branch off into Tony’s favorite studies of Neoplatonism, Vedanta, Buddhism, and Jungian psychology. At first I fumbled for reference points in my own discarded Christianity, but mention of that tradition was usually squashed. Many of the classes would end with silent meditation, following a few directives on the unfamiliar task of watching one’s own thoughts as they arise. For further instruction we were referred to Paul Brunton’s works, especially The Secret Path and The Quest of the Overself.

Some of us could not get enough of Tony’s mind and presence. Not content with dropping into the bookstore most afternoons and sitting in class several evenings a week, we started to go out to his house on Sundays. Ella May would make a lunch that encouraged us to persist in our new vegetarian diet, then everyone would sit around and listen to Tony until the sun began to set through the big window overlooking Seneca Lake. Not many people helped with the dishwashing, though those who did would discover that Ella May was herself a mystical philosopher, though her life had left her no time, and perhaps no need, for the intellectual path that had seized our imaginations. Many of us were attached to Cornell University or Ithaca College as graduate students, young faculty, or staff, but our new teacher spared us none of his disdain for universities, scholarship, academic philosophy, and anyone with a PhD. I duly inscribed at the end of my dissertation the Latin words dissertatione confecta incipit philosophia vera (“Dissertation finished, true philosophy begins”), confident that no one would read it carefully enough to query them.

Tony’s own higher education—and again, I relate anecdotes, not biography—had begun and ended in the space of a few weeks. While other teenagers were worrying about sports and dating, the young Damiani was tormented by the question: “How do I perceive a world?” Where would one go for an answer to this burning question? A university, naturally, where all wisdom is kept, and in particular to the department of philosophy. So Tony enrolled in freshman philosophy, I believe at Columbia. After a few lectures, as his problem was no closer to being solved, he went up to the professor and enquired when the class would be taught how we perceive a world. “That’s epistemology—not until the third term,” muttered the dignitary, and that was enough for Tony. He would find out for himself.

Not long after, Tony saw a display in a bookstore window of Paul Brunton’s works, and, curiously attracted, tried reading them. Immediately he found his question answered as academic philosophy had never been able to answer it. More than that, he found the epistemological explanation connected to a whole way of life, a whole reason for living. In gratitude to this author, Tony wrote to him in care of the publisher, hoping that his letter might reach Brunton in some Himalayan or jungle retreat. But Brunton happened, just then in 1946, to be in New York City, and there Tony met him. He had found his master, though one who never claimed such a role, describing himself in a letter as no guru but “just a student of these matters.”

Tony’s teaching was a carefully calculated blend of positive and negative touches. I remember going at sunset to find seclusion by an attic window, and imagining his great love for me and for all those he was helping streaming across Cayuga Lake. But the love which enabled him to put up with us was for our Overselves, not for our childish egos. Since my ego was currently vested in the music and art of the avant-garde, I found Tony’s taste for loud romantic music rather passé, while as far as I could tell, he had no taste at all in art. I wanted to have my own connoisseurship appreciated, but he was certainly not going to play along with that; nor, to my disappointment, was he the slightest bit interested in my own history and personality. Later I understood that a teacher of his kind cannot possibly get involved with the ego problems of his students, least of all when his teaching has to do precisely with liberation from the ego. As he wrote to me when I was beginning to appreciate his method, “You may have seen that the stance I subscribe to, is to regard the I-bound soul objectively, concretely and not to experience it subjectively. This comes from growth; not books . . .”

Deep philosophy has seldom worn such casual clothing. Tony’s conversation was so familiar and colloquial in style as sometimes to seem crude. His words, easy to understand, were often hard to accept, for they aimed at our pet delusions and felt out every chink in our psychological armor. He was one of those who have taken heaven by storm and wrested the truth from the wreckage of the ego. By no means all of his students, especially the women among them, were moved to emulate him. Everyone tried, or pretended, to read Plotinus or Malkani’s Philosophy of the Self, but few could keep at it all night. Obviously there was another side to Tony, or he would have repelled all but the hardy few.

 As far as I know, his only relaxation was music, in which his preference was for deep, melancholy, meditative pieces (Bach’s and Beethoven’s slow movements, Chopin’s Nocturnes) or for the exultant monuments of later Romanticism (Wagner, Mahler, Scriabin). He had no enthusiasm for the more objective music of earlier and later periods. In full-blooded Romanticism, perhaps he experienced in pure form the emotional energies that enabled him to keep going against all obstacles, first as a student and later as a teacher. There was behind his intensity—and it can easily be sensed in his recorded conversations—a reservoir of impersonal compassion for human ignorance such as fuels the efforts of every genuine spiritual teacher. There was never any doubt in our minds that we had known him before, and that, if we did not abandon the Quest, we would meet him again.

It was concern for Tony’s family, suffering the continual invasion of their home and feeding dozens every weekend, that gave some of the “questers” the idea of building a separate center for meditation and philosophic study. They put up a large log cabin on part of his land, which was henceforth known as “Wisdom’s Goldenrod Limited,” or “The Center.” The “Limited” was a discreet statement that the core of students had now formed, and that, while others would be welcomed if they wished to take the initiative, no further outreach would be made, no 100-level courses offered, as it were. Several people bought or built houses near to the center, so that a close community formed. One or two “monks” lived in small rooms in the meditation building and took care of the property, which was beautifully landscaped and maintained. A venerable Swedish lady took up residence in her own cabin on the Wisdom’s Goldenrod land. It was she who decided that it was inappropriate to call our teacher by a familiar name; Tony found himself promoted to “Anthony,” and so he has remained.

The locals on Seneca Lake regarded the center with some suspicion, and had to be reassured that it was not a cult, with all that that implied. Public recognition of a spectacular kind came in 1979. By then, some of Anthony’s early students had gravitated to Tibetan Buddhist circles and visited the Dalai Lama XIV in Dharamsala, India. The exiled leader accepted the invitation to visit Wisdom’s Goldenrod during his coming American tour, and to open the new library that had just been built. While it came as no surprise to those who already recognized Anthony’s worth, the Dalai Lama’s three-day visit did put a stamp of approval on his teaching which few could gainsay (Horstman, 5). It was also the beginning of Ithaca’s development as a center for Tibetan Buddhism: the city now houses the Dalai Lama’s official North American seat. (See the website of Ithaca’s Namgyal Monastery: http://www.namgyal.org.)

By the time the Wisdom’s Goldenrod Center was built, I had left Ithaca and felt little part in that increasingly focused community. Nor—and not for want of trying—could I understand “Astronoesis,” the system-of-all-systems that occupied Anthony’s mind and those of his closest pupils (Damiani, Astronoesis). My only attraction to Tibetan traditions came through an encounter, in the winter of 1978–79, with the noninstitutional Dzogchen. Most of all, I was set on building bridges between the academic and esoteric realms, convinced that each could benefit from the better parts of the other. The academy needed to break through the restrictions of the scientistic mentality, formed in reaction to religious dogma; the New Age that was then appearing as the public face of esotericism needed more rigorous and self-critical methods. (Some hope, I can hear Anthony saying!) Encounters with Brunton himself had already confirmed that I must go my own way, as did Anthony’s last “fraternal” communications.

The last time I saw Anthony was in 1984. I had been asked to come and talk to the students about the Traditionalist philosopher René Guénon. My translation of his Multiple States of Being had just come out, and they wanted to know about the works that were at the time untranslated, especially The Great Triad. (Guénon’s collected works have since been published in English by Sophia Perennis in Hillsdale, New York.) After my presentation, Anthony made some remarks about Guénon’s incredible arrogance and that of all the Traditionalists. (No matter that my discovery of them had come through him, and that I had purchased his own specially bound copies of works by Guénon and another Traditionalist, Julius Evola, at his bookstore.)

Talk turned to the future. Anthony’s view was very bleak. “Just so long as President Reagan keeps those missiles pointed against Russia” were his words. This was election year, and everyone else I knew was against Reagan and his aggressive policies. I went cold. But then I didn’t know that Anthony was already suffering from lung cancer, nor how the 1980s would turn out. He died in October 1984, leaving Wisdom’s Goldenrod without anyone remotely resembling a successor. Thus the institution was spared the indignities and rivalries that so often follow the founder’s demise.

In the previous year, 1983, Anthony had given a series of talks, or rather conversations, to a circle of students in Sweden. These were gathered, after his death, into a book called Looking into Mind. The dialogue form recalls what survives of Socrates’ teachings; and the comparison is not a casual one, for the Athenian stonemason and the New York toll collector had many things in common. Both came of humble backgrounds and began to teach, neglecting their families, because of a sacred sign that left them no alternative. (In Anthony’s case, it was a revelation following a heart attack in 1967.) Both were spellbinding talkers, but neither could or would write his philosophy down. Socrates’ discourse was captured by Plato, or so the latter would persuade us; a fragment of Anthony’s was recorded, more reliably, on tape. Both had conservative political opinions that disconcerted some of their listeners. Neither was a feminist in the slightest degree. But that is irrelevant to the theme of Looking into Mind, which begins with the question of Anthony’s boyhood obsession—“how do I perceive a world?”—and ends with the dissolution of that world in the One which is, paradoxically, the only true reality.

Much later, I saw the whole enterprise in the context of the spiritual movements that have arisen in upstate New York. Of these, the Shakers, Mormons, Spiritualists, Adventists, Oneida Perfectionists, and Jane Roberts’ Seth Material (exactly contemporary with Anthony’s work) are the best known among a host of others (See Godwin, Upstate Cauldron, especially 295–301). But there is, to my mind, a great difference between their religious, social, or at best mystical goals and the independent philosophical path into which Anthony initiated us.

While some may argue over how to define initiation, I know from this encounter that it can come without a ritual, a degree, or a title. It can seek you out, rather than being sought, but need not enroll you in its club or cult. Fifty years later, I see it as a fundamental rearrangement of the soul that removes certain obstacles to its development. The technical details of how it is done are unknown to me, but the consequence is that a door opens, or even just a window, that can never be closed again. From then on, the path is open to solving the particular “equation” with which each of us is born, until all its factors are reduced to zero.

Sources

For the history and current activities of the Wisdom’s Goldenrod Center, visit its website: http://www.wisdomsgoldenrod.com. See also the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation (www.paulbrunton.org), which grew out of it. Paul Brunton’s extensive archive is now accessible at Cornell University’s Kroch Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Brunton, Paul. The Secret Path: A Technique of Spiritual Self-Discovery for the Modern World. New York: Dutton, 1935.

 ———. The Wisdom of the Overself. New York: Dutton, 1943.

Damiani, Anthony J. Astronoesis: Philosophy’s Empirical Context; Astrology’s Transcendental Ground. Burdett, N.Y.: Larson, 2000.

———. Looking into Mind: How to Recognize Who You Are and How You Know. Burdett, N.Y.: Larson, 1990.

———. Standing in Your Own Way: Talks on the Nature of the Ego. Burdett, N.Y.: Larson, 1993.

Godwin, Joscelyn. Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015.

Guénon, René. The Multiple States of Being. Translated by Joscelyn Godwin. Burdett, N.Y.: Larson, 1984.

Horstman, Judith. “Wisdom’s Goldenrod: Damiani’s Center for Dialogue,” Ithaca Journal, Nov. 3, 1979.

Malkani, Ghanshamdas Rattanmal. Philosophy of the Self, or A System of Idealism Based upon Advait Vedanta. Amalner, India: Indian Institute of Philosophy, 1939.

Joscelyn Godwin was born in England, educated as a musicologist at Cambridge and Cornell universities, and taught from 1971 to 2016 at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. He has written, edited, and translated many books on “speculative music” and on the Western esoteric traditions, including Symbols in the Wilderness: Early Masonic Survivals in Upstate New York (with Christian Goodwillie), The Greater and Lesser Worlds of Robert Fludd: Macrocosm, Microcosm, and Medicine, and translations of Introduction to Magic, volumes 2 and 3, by Julius Evola and the UR group. This article originally appeared in The Art and Science of Initiation, edited by Jedediah French and Angel Millar (London: Lewis Masonic, 2019).

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Printed in the  Fall 2021  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Oliver, Lucy, "Glyn: A Portrait " Quest 108:4, pg 12-16

 

By Lucy Oliver

We nearly lost him at Summertown, Oxford, in the summer of 1976, when he stepped into the path of a car in the Banbury Road and was just yanked back in time. Saved by a whisker! He was unfazed, but it stuck in my mind as an uncharacteristic lapse of attention in a man whose life work revolved around observation, investigation, and experience, which he called the three modes of attention. In this case, observation had slipped a little out of balance with the other two!

When Glyn and what we called “The Work” entered my life, it opened a whole new dimension. It was as if I’d been living in a small room with a balcony, only to discover that it was situated within a multiroomed mansion with cellars, garden, and private chapel, all open to me if I chose to investigate. Or indeed, like in Plato’s cave, I could turn away from shadows on the wall and face the authentic world beyond, if I held the intention to do so.

How does one recognize such authenticity, especially if it is not on a dais with flowers addressing a multitude?

I think of Glyn in any social context. What did he speak from? He needed no props, no badge, and you listened—a whole room would gravitate round this stocky little figure with the long hair, nicotine-stained fingers, and cigarette burns on a grubby jumper (sometimes turned inside out for the benefit of the clean side). He could look more presentable in clean gear and jacket on public occasions, but the shoes usually had no laces, just holes—he had a thing about laces.

Not everyone was enchanted, however. Some ran a mile, and he terrified others.

When you looked into his eyes you saw no thing, no one. Just a vast space.

His angle of vision was always unexpected, but always coherent, and when you examined it, it opened up new ways of thinking. When I first met him in the early seventies, he was just embarking on his phase of gathering people to help with his self-generated task of reformulating old philosophical ideas for modern understanding, particularly the Kabbalah, which was the basis of his training. In the newly enlivened esoteric and spiritual context of London in the sixties, new ideas arriving from the East mingled with a rediscovered Western heritage. Magic, mysticism, meditation, astrology, esoteric lodges, spiritualism, and theosophy were supplemented by elements from Jung and psychoanalysis, and the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky work presented a demystifying corrective to exotic and florid hocus-pocus. Glyn emerged from all this with a clear sense of a job to be done: to unclutter the fantasies and superstitions which accrete round any religious or esoteric way, and look to first principles in the roots of actual experience.

His bearded face was open, well shaped, and his gaze steady and appraising. Around his eyes were crinkle lines. The eyes usually gleamed a little as he looked at you, and a rumbly laugh was never far away, shaking his form quietly at the absurdity of the human condition. “Hours of innocent merriment” was a stock phrase. He would mischievously apply it, sometimes to an apparently serious endeavor, either his own or some other exercise in which a great deal of pompous self-investment was evident.

The Kitchen

His headquarters for nearly forty years was the Kitchen, tucked away at the back of a typical old west London apartment block. The Kitchen modified slightly over the years, but in general it presented mushroom-colored walls with a huge brown and yellowing Tree of Life emblem on one wall, and another circular diagram painted on another. Glyn would preside from a large, ancient chair, and all others would perch on a variety of old wooden chairs, some minus their backs, and one other semicomfortable, albeit elderly, armchair. Ashtrays abounded, and in the early years, your eyes would sting with the smoke haze, as most people smoked continuously. A rickety window would sometimes be propped open with a pole, allowing a freezing draft to circulate round your feet, which turned into solid blocks by the end of the evening. Glyn rolled his own cigarettes from a round yellow tin of Boar’s Head tobacco. In later years, concerned for his health perhaps, he inserted the wobbly fag into a holder, initially constructed himself from a ballpoint pen. Later he graduated to proper holders, but the elegant impression was always pleasingly incongruous.

In addition to aching buttocks and back, stinging eyes, and feet like ice, one’s upper section got rather warm. My face used to flush like a tomato from the heat of the single gas burner on the grubby stove, which was the sole form of heating in the winter. I learned to wear thick boots if possible, and old clothes that could go straight into the wash, as the smoke penetrated right to vest and bra. This used to amaze me as I picked them up next morning, smelling as if I’d been barbecued the night before.

Glyn’s entertainment came from devouring fiction, especially science, and from an old television perched on a cupboard. He enjoyed watching what we tactfully called “his rubbish,” and would often make you wait if you sprang on him unexpectedly, until some cop drama or the hapless geriatric escapades in the sitcom Last of the Summer Wine (a particular favorite) had finished.

I never quite fathomed where his vast erudition came from, especially in pre-Internet days. He kept up with documentaries, of course, and had read very widely for many years, with a reading card at the British Library, which partly accounted for his extensive general knowledge and ability to discuss the most minute detail of just about anything with just about anyone. But it was the way he processed information which was unique. He incorporated it into some internal processor unlike anything I have ever encountered. He handled maths and scientific concepts with precision, and used them in the reams of delicate and detailed diagrams he generated constantly to back up, and indeed inspire, his metaphysical theorizing.

Glyn’s background was in electrical engineering and accountancy, and he was an intensely practical man. He loved to make things, and to make things work. He called it “bootstrapping,” a term derived from his days in the Royal Air Force after the war. Bootstrapping, as I understand it, meant you picked yourself up by your own bootstraps, not relying on anyone else. (A gymnastic feat, but worth the effort!) For example, part of ritual training was making things from the most basic materials, not purchasing them ready-made. To make a knife for ritual purposes, you boiled up the fish oil to make the glue, cut and tempered the blade in a fire, twined a rope together, and used it to wrap into a handle. That kind of basic! The physical was an analogy for other levels of operation. “Back to first principles” was the most fundamental aspect of his teaching.

The Kitchen was not a serious place. He liked to laugh, and in keeping with the “no guru” rule, we all took the mickey whenever we could. It was an achievement to make him laugh, so we all tried, and he enjoyed witticisms. Puns were a special favorite, and he came up with some delectably awful ones himself.

He was immensely patient, though, with all the raw young talent he constantly had to deal with. We would ring up and ask to come around then and there, somehow assuming he was always available for our benefit, or would always be pleased to discuss the solemn ideas of aspiring Knowledge seekers. He almost never refused, and welcomed you with a quizzical look as you walked in the door, assessing where you were at. “What news?” he’d say, leaning back in his chair and puffing.

The conversations would go on into the small hours. It was common knowledge that the best stuff happened well after midnight, so we would wait it out, feeling the feet solidify and the cheeks start to burn. The conversation got deeper. If there had been an assorted crowd in the kitchen (you never quite knew who would be there, or from how far away), the less determined gradually peeled off and went home, leaving the hardy to push the conversation into more intimate areas of metaphysics or gossip. It was like being fed. You finally stumbled off into the silent streets, hoping your car hadn’t been boxed in by double-parking, feeling replete and inwardly humming with a sort of psychic food, and possibly pages of scribbled notes. A visit to Glyn provided many weeks of internal stimulus.

His various personal peculiarities included not liking to have his hair cut (like Samson, I used to think), and it was most often tied into a ponytail behind him. The absence of shoelaces was owed to some very rational justification which I quite forget (he was heavy-footed when he stood and walked), and he went through a phase of wearing a bizarre housedress, like a jellaba, made by his wife, instead of trousers. More comfortable, he asserted, flicking the ash down his rotund middle, where little holes appeared, and a few assorted stains.

Once he startled us all by briefly shaving off his beard. It was not popular, as his chin was unexpectedly small. Normally he had the face of a traditional prophet or guru: an ample greying beard and moustache, well-proportioned nose, and eyes which saw right into your soul and into the soul of the universe. It was a noble head. He looked the part.

You could get lost in the eyes. Later in his life I used to deliberately stare into them, trying to see how far I could go, or if I could find anything. Because later in life he lived more and more on what has been called “Planet Glyn,” it was harder to connect with him. His voice sometimes trailed off as if he realized that people weren’t following, and indeed I often was not. He also wept. Tears would just emerge as he talked, especially at the mention of anything carrying a certain type of emotion—you could call it higher emotion, which wasn’t personal and involved humanity at its best: tales of people doing kindnesses, the ritual of royalty, the ethos of the British Commonwealth, accounts of death or birth. He would wipe his eyes and carry on talking.

His presence carried such charge that once, leaving, I got as far as the front steps before the whole fabric of my being seemed to disintegrate into a huge void. What was left stood pressed against the door, the rest blown away; everything I thought was me, gone. What I’d come to talk about was completely obliterated. How did that happen, I thought? We had just chatted.

He never ceased producing material, right up to his final brief illness, methodically sketching neat little diagrams, transposing figures, weighing up propositions and terminology, and generating new angles and theory to reformulate the laws of the Eternal. It was always unexpected. He could turn things on their heads and would try out new ideas on everyone who came through the door. We were his sounding boards. He liked to be challenged and to engage in a good argument, testing out what worked and what didn’t. His regular revisions of theory kept us all busy for nigh on thirty years, exploring and developing what he expounded as the latest way of looking, religiously copying the latest diagram to take back to whatever groups we were in. “Glyn’s new diagram” was a prize to be shared.

In later years fewer people came, but he never stopped generating, late into the night when all was quiet, and throughout the day as well.

He was always interested in other people’s productions too, and was pleased when someone had done some original work. He regularly threw out titbits of ideas and stimuli, hoping they would be picked up and developed. Often they were too far out for the recipient to be able to relate to, and fell on fallow ground. In the early years when we were running a center, he was an active, almost explosive presence, directing, steering, pulling extraordinary rabbits out of hats, and generally creating an atmosphere of sheer magic and high adventure. The world was always richer around Glyn; the curtain of the mundane world pulled back to reveal wonders; the spirit bowed down to earth and was just about graspable.

	Lighthouse,” one of a series of sixty-four diagrams forming Sareoso, Web of Wholeness, Glyn’s final compendium of the principles of creation. Image from www.sareoso.org.

He was never unkind; irritable sometimes, ruthless when need be; humble, he kept nothing for himself, owned practically nothing, and refused all charity, even, if possible, from the state. Until pensionable age he mostly worked, but had very little money. After a heart scare in middle age, he refused the recommended pacemaker, declining to have a mechanical object in such a symbolic role. Responsibility for your own actions was a rule he taught and lived by. He could be fierce, and dealt harshly with some of the men on occasion. There was always a little frisson of trepidation when going to see him, as cherished notions might get knocked for six, but I remember going to see him once, expecting a rap over the knuckles for something and met only kindness and gentleness. I came away with my heart rejoicing, and feeling unexpectedly stronger. Visits almost always tuned you in to something greater and reminded, one way or another, but you could never be sure which way.

He trained us thoroughly in all the traditional esoteric skills and practices, if only so there would be no veil of mystique. “We are generalists,” he would say. Specialized in no particular area, a generalist has a little experience of all, enough to know the basic principles and be able to design or recreate should the knowledge be lost. It gives a very clear-eyed and sober appreciation of how the psyche works to generate human life and interaction, and is excellent insurance against glamour and inflation. “As necessary” is the golden rule. Speak and act only as necessary.

 

Authority

He had a personal rule of which he regularly reminded all who came: he would not keep secrets. Everything was passed on. It was a way of preventing the confidences of the self-important (which we all were) from accumulating round him, and then being used to manipulate him or others. (such as asserting authority: “I went to see Glyn, and he . . .”) It was not possible to manipulate Glyn. He kept nothing for himself and owned nothing, material or other.

I frequently had the experience of hearing something I had told to him repeated back to me by someone else, particularly if it reflected badly on me, and someone was trying to set me straight! Galling, but effective. So much human interaction consists of power games, trying to steal a march on another, present oneself as important, thoughtful, clever; to imply that one has the approval of an authority figure. But Glyn wouldn’t play.

“Authority is given, not taken. People give authority to others, be it wise or unwise” was his stand on the cause of so much grief and violence as it plays out in the world.

By repeating to everyone who passed through his kitchen whatever was current, he prevented any logjams of personal authority. It was not for the sake of gossip, though he liked to know what was going on, but any personal stuff was fair game for sharing. Deeper matters, such as meditation checks or more profound conversations, were safe, however. You instinctively learned to tell the difference. Passing it on was more likely if the issue seemed personal, secret, or power-seeking. 

This practice was one of his deadly tricks to puncture self-importance, which is the greatest obstacle on a path of Knowledge. The greatest challenge for a teacher is the task of helping others to get beyond their natural egotism in a way which doesn’t diminish them, but encourages growth and development of Being. It’s one thing to give out teachings, but creating conditions to provide the shocks and provocations for change and self-insight is quite another.

So, despite his protestations not to give him authority, naturally everyone did, and sought his approval and imprimatur stamp for their ideas, theories, and projects. One of two things would happen. The Great Project might evaporate before your eyes once you’d aired it in his presence, and for no very clear reason, because there’d been no criticism. Or he chattily explored it with you, using it as a jumping-off point for whatever was preoccupying him at that time. You went away pleased, and somehow convinced of his approval. Except he hadn’t actually given it. He’d just encouraged you to do more of what you were determined to do anyway.

Rather than trying to change people or their ideas, he maintained it was often better and more useful to reenforce them, so that if there were cracks or weaknesses, they would become apparent to the person him- or herself sooner rather than later. If there is a crack, widen it. If a weakness, drive a wedge in. He employed this strategy consistently, and articulated it frequently as a useful methodology. “Make the inevitable happen.” Hence people would make their own assumptions along the lines they desired, and would depart with a comfortable assurance of authority bestowed.

However, because (a) you had accorded the authority yourself, and (b) there were no secrets, quite often your plans would later sneak up and hit you in the back from another quarter, because he would have told everybody, and probably not in the flattering terms you might have wished for. Others would gain a different impression of whether or not he approved!

In all this Glyn was absolutely up-front. He told everyone his strategies as a teaching point, but it was hard to believe him when it came to oneself. They were simple principles, consciously employed, and he would sigh and shake his head theatrically when he was accused of manipulating. He faced these accusations often, because it is human nature to invest authority in others, and then blame them if your expectations are not met.

I think Glyn made such an issue of authority, and of his own nonguru role, because there is no issue more important in the individualist and turbulent age we live in than understanding the nature of authority. The question To whom or what are you giving authority? underlies every conflict situation, every ideology. It is the nub of morality, aggression, victimization, and all “beliefs.” Secular humanist philosophies give ultimate authority to ourselves as humans. Others bestow ultimate authority on something outside us: Spirit, Consciousness, God. And finally, when artificial intelligence mimics human intelligence, will we give or withhold authority to the algorithms which apparently know us better than we know ourselves? What would that mean in practice?

These are not academic issues, but day-to-day realities. Just about all human interactions are shaped by authority and the power which goes with it. The principle that authority is given, not taken, is transformative and fundamental, and Glyn lived it out with every person he encountered.

Self-responsibility means standing on your own feet. Otherwise “where will you be when your One has passed away?” as it says in The Book of Jubilee, an esoteric text produced in Glyn’s circle. His methods were based on a view that the essence of Knowledge is common to all humanity, and on equality and self-responsibility, but did not pander to natural egotism, ambition, or the wish to be given the fruits of wisdom and peace without effort. He set up situations in the early years when he was still actively engaged in training, but it was for purposes of the Work, not to play with people.

He could travel into the future with an enormous vision of humankind in the multiverse. And into the past, with an impressive knowledge of history and a unique way of seeing relationships and the forces governing events. Forty years ago, when Islam seemed a benign, quiet presence on the world stage, I remember him warning that the big trouble to come was going to arise from Islam. It surprised me, as at that time many of us had links and great sympathy with Sufi groups and saw Islam mainly in terms of profound Sufi mysticism. I think of his prophecy every time a new Islamicist atrocity hits the headlines.

One day he announced he was learning Basque, a language with a unique root among languages and confined to a particular small area in the world, and where he intimated there could be an old tradition of knowledge. He found and hired a tutor and studied his dictionary diligently. With its help he then translated and presented in Basque some contemporary formulations of ancient principles (see www.sareoso.org). That it would require considerable effort to access them, reflects their value, and “burying the bone deeper” is designed to activate the teachings, not conceal them. It’s especially salient in an age when everything appears accessible and just there for the taking. Growth through consciousness is never like that.

He lived longer than he expected, having withdrawn from active steering in most capacities long before, and offering only “technical advice” for many years. He had a little pottery urn made all ready for his ashes, and everyone passed it daily as it sat on a shelf in the dim hallway. He seemed to have been preparing for a long time, and was entirely ready to take a journey into the realm of “the Player on the other side,” as he liked to refer to the Divine mystery. You felt he loved that Player. He would talk God in any one’s language, quoting from mystics, Christian, Kabbalist, Buddhist, or from any other tradition, emphasizing that the God we know is “God in you.” Some conversations about the spiritual that I had with him seemed to leave the earth; I only took away fragments jotted down afterwards, but the impression of an immensity opening up was awesome.

It wasn’t even in the words; it was something about the space created in his presence, and love was in the space.

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Lucy Oliver has been a teacher and practitioner of meditation derived from the Western esoteric tradition for over forty years. Her book The Meditator’s Guidebook k has been in print since 1996. She lives in London, and after studies in sacred symbolism at Oxford University, has developed Symbolic Encounters, a method of pointing out the symbolic roots in language on a path of knowledge (www.meaningbydesign.co.uk). She was a founding member of Saros Foundation for the Perpetuation of Knowledge and of High Peak Meditation, established in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. This chapter is excerpted from her latest book, Tessellations: Patterns of Life and Death in the Company of a Master (published by Matador), an insider’s view of working within a Western oral tradition.

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