Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Spring 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "From the Editor's Desk " Quest 108:2, pg 2

This issue, on Initiation, has a long article by me on the subject, so I hope you will understand if I use this space to write about something else.

Namely, Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. It was founded in San Francisco in 1985 by Jay Kinney, then known chiefly as an underground cartoonist (Young Lust and Anarchy Comics). I started writing for it in 1986, and became editor in 1990; Jay continued as editor in chief and publisher.

Each issue of the magazine covered a specific theme (much like Quest). The themes covered a wide range, including the Kabbalah, magic, Gnosticism, C.G. Jung, G.I. Gurdjieff, Freemasonry, Sufism, Hermeticism, and esoteric Christianity. Our best-selling issue was, not surprisingly, the winter 1993 issue—on psychedelics.

In 1998, things began to change. For personal reasons, I decided to move back to the East Coast after eighteen years in California. In addition, the market was getting rougher for small magazines like Gnosis. While finances had always been extremely tight, the bankruptcy of one of the magazine’s biggest distributors pushed things over the edge, and Jay reluctantly decided to close things down. The last issue, published in the spring of 1999, was, fittingly, on the Holy Grail.

As a crowning effort, Jay and I collaborated on a book on these themes: Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions. It was first published by Tarcher/Penguin in 1999. In 2006, Quest Books brought out a revised edition, which is still in print. In 2004, Mitch Horowitz, then an editor at Tarcher/Penguin publishers, brought out a Gnosis anthology, edited by Jay, called The Inner West: An Introduction to the Hidden Wisdom of the West.

In the thick of it back then, I didn’t totally grasp Gnosis’s power or importance. At this point, I have published eleven books and have been editor of Quest for close to twelve years. But when I meet people, the thing they most often mention is, after all these years, Gnosis.

The magazine was a remarkable effort, considering that the full-time staff never exceeded four and there was no institutional support whatsoever. Its greatest contribution—formulated by Jay at the outset—was to provide a venue for discussing the Western esoteric traditions that was intellectually serious without being academic. Although we did have some skeptical materialists writing, the basic premise was to steer a middle course between reductionism and credulity. Our contributors ranged from Eastern Orthodox priests to Sufi masters to Satanists, and I took great pride in that fact.

Legally, the publisher of Gnosis was the Lumen Foundation, a nonprofit Jay set up to publish the magazine. With rare exceptions, the foundation didn’t do anything else, so when the magazine ceased publication, the foundation went into dormancy.

So it remained for many years. Last year California’s Franchise Tax Board (the entity governing state revenue collection) decided that since the Lumen Foundation was quiescent, it was time to dissolve it. Which has been done. One condition of dissolution was that any remaining assets were to be transferred to another nonprofit.

 I’m greatly honored that the Theosophical Society in America was chosen as that organization. The chief asset to be transferred was rights to the magazine and the website (www.lumen.org). Consequently, the TSA is now the rights holder to the contents of Gnosis.

To this day, very little of the material in the magazine is available online. The Gnosis website lists all of the issues, but only has one sample article from each one. Nevertheless, print copies of all issues are available from Fields Book Store, another San Francisco legend (ordering details can be found on the www.lumen.org site).

Twenty years later, I find it rather funny to end up as editor of Quest, because even back then, under the editorship of Bill Metzger and my good friend Ray Grasse, it was one of extremely few magazines in the field I really respected. I often opened an issue of Quest and said, “Damn! I wish we’d run that!” I almost never felt that way about any of the other publications.

The circle comes around. I’m very pleased that Ray still continues to write for Quest (for example, his article in this issue). Jay too has been a regular contributor in recent years.

People often talk about the Masters, the conscious circle of humanity, or whatever term you would like to use. Much of this talk is idle. Nevertheless, I’m impelled to say that I believe these beings, whoever they are, had a hand in inspiring Gnosis. I’m glad we can help keep the impulse alive.

Richard Smoley

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Printed in the  Spring 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "Savage Initiation: An Interview with Andrew Harvey " Quest 108:2, pg 14-20

By Richard Smoley

Andrew Harvey has long been a well-known figure in alternate spirituality. Born in India in 1952, he was educated at boarding schools and at the University of Oxford, where, at age twenty-one, he was the youngest fellow to be elected to the prestigious All Souls College. He remained at Oxford until 1977, when a spiritual search took him back to India. He encountered Mother Meera (born 1960), a guru whom devotees regard as the embodiment of the Divine Mother. Harvey extolled her in his book Hidden Journey: A Spiritual Awakening but later broke with her, a process he described in another book, The Sun at Midnight: A Memoir of the Dark Night.

            Harvey’s books—which number over thirty—include The Direct Path: Creating a Personal Journey to the Divine through the World’s Traditions; The Divine Mother; Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ; and The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism. His book Turn Me to Gold: 108 Poems of Kabir, illustrated with photographs by Brett Hurd, was published in 2018. He currently lives in Oak Park, Illinois.

            Harvey spoke at the Theosophical Society’s Olcott headquarters in October 2019, and I had the chance to interview him then. I found him to be a powerful and eloquent yet sympathetic figure, and the interview was more inspiring for me than many I have done. Rarely does one meet a man of such intelligence, passion, and depth.   

Richard Smoley: What do you think of spiritual initiation? How do you experience it?

Andrew Harvey: I’d like to start with the place where I’m most concerned: we’re going through a global initiation. We’re going through the ultimate initiation, because we’re going through a crisis which threatens the entirety of human life and the great mass of nature. We’re going through an initiation of such extremity and severity that most of us are unable to see its true meaning.

Initiations are absolutely central to the different stages of the path and to the different levels of evolutionary transformation. We’ve come to a moment in our history when the depths of life are giving us the sign that we need to transform completely in order to survive.

A new kind of humanity is being born out of the chaos of our time. This initiation corresponds exactly and in detail to the frightening but transfiguring initiation that is called the Dark Night in the great Islamic and Christian and Kabbalistic mystical systems. This Dark Night corresponds to the death process in shamanism. It corresponds to the great revelation of the mystical traditions that the ultimate initiation on the path is dying into life, into truth, into love, into enlightened consciousness.

There is always this death process on the inner journey, and now we’re living this death process, this great initiation, on the outer journey. This is potentially scary, because very people as yet understand that this is part of a great evolutionary transformation and follows the great mystical laws of the inner Dark Night.

It’s very important for the survival of the human race to know three lessons. The first is to cultivate radical humility. We’ve created a complete nightmare out of our hubris of the world. We have to confess that we know nothing about the mystery and that we must open our whole being now—heart, mind, soul, and body—to the mystery to be guided forward.

The second great lesson is that we need to die to the full self that we’ve created out of our trauma, out of the karma of our hubris—a full self that is now devastating the planet and creating a complete, horrific, sterile, disgusting, obscene prison of the entire planet, torturing the animals to death, killing the creation, organizing a system that is destructive to the inner and outer lives of billions of people.

Third, we need to turn to the essential nature of the divine, which is recreative, resurrecting joy. We need to experience, not just talk about, this great joy through prayer, practice, meditation, and compassionate service. This is going to be the fuel of our survival through this savage initiation. If you can stay surrendered in joy and to joy throughout whatever happens through the initiation, then the magic of the Dark Night can work upon you and help you embody the divine; it can birth you onto the next level of the evolutionary dance of the divine in the human.

This is how I see the initiatory structure of our time, and I’m devoting my life to helping people understand this, so that they can meet this outer initiation without fear, without paralysis, but rather in deep, concentrated joy and deep, sacred purpose and mission.

Richard: In what time frame do you think this crisis is likely to occur?

Andrew: Very much sooner than we think. I think we’re heading right into the evolutionary eye of the storm. I think it will be here within the next ten to fifteen years. I think the timescale of the United Nation report on the environment is an accurate one. We have, at the most, ten years. The Kogis give us six years.

The great proof of our lunacy is that facing this unspeakable challenge of climate change, we’re doing so pathetically little to counteract it. We’re nearing a moment of complete loss of control. The Amazon is burning. American democracy is burning. The world economic system is fragile. The trade system is fragile. The whole set of systems is collapsing. There are very few countervailing political and economic movements to give any solidity.

For me, a mystic is a supremely realistic person. A mystic has been graced with the clarity of the real, by the real. The mystic knows that he or she is deathless and that divine reality has never been born and will never die. The mystic is in touch with that divine reality and so has the clarity to see exactly what’s happening. The mystic doesn’t need false hope, because the mystic has divine hope. The mystic doesn’t need to mask the reality of what’s going on, because the mystic knows that what’s going on has a mystery of divine meaning behind it.

Being a radical mystic does not mean having fake hope for humanity. It means being able to meet whatever’s happening with joy and with resolution, to give what you can, to serve in whatever way is most useful, and to turn up with a noble bravado of love in whatever situation arises.

For me, being a real mystic means being a real rebel and living your life in a rebellion of joy and compassion and harmony and passion for God, whatever happens—living a noble life in the fullest sense. The ultimately nobility of soul is now possible to us because we’re living in the ultimate crisis.

So instead of allowing this crisis to paralyze one, it is an invitation to those who love God to burn away the false self in the fire of divine love, to come into a wholly new level of evolution, to gamble our lives away for God, and to cause a hell of a lot of mischief. It’s an invitation to turn up with all the passions of the heart blazing and all the passions of the will ordered and all the passions of the vocation of one’s mission lucid and focused. This is not a time for despair. It’s a time for gambling your life nobly away for God, in God, for the future, for the potential birth of a new humanity.

Richard: Even so, a lot of people are understandably at the edge of despair.

Andrew: I think it’s essential to be touched by that despair. You have to allow that despair to do its divine work, which is to purify you of illusion. We need to despair of our false solutions, we need to despair of any political or economic or fake technological solutions to this extreme crisis, because we need to understand that this crisis is, in its heart, a spiritual crisis. It’s a crisis of the soul, and we must address the roots of the crisis.

Despair bitch-slaps you awake to any fake solution and drives you into the arms of the one real solution—awakening: enlightened, embodied, divine consciousness. This is the only place a new world can be created from. This is the only place in which we can sustain this savage storm of annihilation that is coming our way, thrive within it, and keep serving and loving within it.

Despair is an absolutely necessary rite of passage for any serious soul in this situation. Despair purifies you of your illusions, but the last illusion that you have to be purified of is despair itself, because despair is the last illusion. You need to learn how to despair of despair and how to burn your despair in the acid of despair, so you can come to the great clarity of the real that sees and knows that reality is saturated with divine presence, that knows your own deathlessness and lives the deathless, awake, enlightened, loving, humble, ruggedly serving life, come what may.

That’s the great gift of despair: to get you going deep so that you discover what only despair can lead you to: the great hope that lies at the other end of the greatest despair, the hope that rises from your own realization of your essential divine identity.

Richard: I’m sixty-three—four years younger than you—so we’re of the same generation. I sense that our generation is the field of Kurukshetra on which this struggle is taking place, because there appear to be two sides, and many people are ranged on each one. I feel some hope for the millennials or Generation Z. They seem somewhat more awakened to me.

Andrew: I have great hope for the young. I’ve been meeting some astounding young seekers: people who have had it with religious and economic and political conventions, who realize that we’ve created a potentially terminal world for them. They are not buying the Kool-Aid of the New Age; they want serious spiritual practice along with radical political transformation and sexual liberation. They’re pursuing a new humanity with a great deal of courage and passion, and I salute them. I long to be able to reach them more deeply and share with them what I’ve learned on my journey.

Most of my work now is designed to reach the millennials so as to give them what I’ve learned and what the elders have learned, because they’re going to have to face the potential end of the planet. They’re going to have to rise to it, and I believe they will.

The Dalai Lama has just written an astonishing book called A Call for Revolution, and he addresses the millennials directly. He says, “I believe in you. I’ve met you all over the world. I’ve seen your pain. I’ve felt your pain. I’ve felt your outrage. I’ve felt your lacerating understanding of the bankruptcy of the baby boom generation. I’ve felt your lacerating understanding of the failures of people like myself and others who’ve tried as hard we can to break up the world. I know that you know that we’re in a terminal situation. I know that you are motivated to do great things, and I would like to offer you some suggestions.”

That’s what makes the book so extraordinary. His Holiness is really speaking for the first time about the desolation of our situation, but also about the great hope that he finds in the millennials. That corresponds with the great hope that I’m finding in these astonishing young people. They are throwing themselves into transformation in order to turn this terrifying situation around.

Richard: Well, of course, they’ll be left and we’ll be gone, so sooner rather than later they’re going to have to do that. Just according to the actuarial tables, many of the most obnoxious baby boom leaders are going to be gone in ten years.

Andrew: Right. As my great friend Maurice Bowra used to say at Oxford, “While there’s death, there’s hope.” Yes, there is a clearing coming, but it’s very important for me as a sacred elder to share the essence of what I’ve been able to learn. What the millennials are achieving is astonishing, but they may need a certain essential rigor, an essential focus on inner practice, and an understanding the laws of sacred action. We’ve come to a crisis that’s so extreme that it demands a level of divine wisdom, both in inner searching and in outer action.

Without that level being offered and modeled, the young might very well believe that they would be able to turn this situation around just by goodwill and nobility and certain kinds of action. That’s not going to be enough. It has to come from a truly transformed consciousness, and I think they are half aware of that, but they need their elders to tenderly and compassionately, and with great respect, offer them the practices, the vision, and the evolutionary perspective that they’re going to need to weather the decisive storm of human history.

Richard: You wanted to talk a little about Kabir.

Andrew: I didn’t spend five years of my life on Kabir because I thought what a lovely, sweet poet Kabir is. I spent five years of my life with Kabir because I know who Kabir is through the grace of God. I know that Kabir is one of the two great universal mystical poetic voices that humanity has been given, the other one being Rumi. I know from my own innermost experience that Kabir’s vision of a universal mystical oneness in the whole of humanity and the whole of created life, beyond dogma, beyond religion, is one of the most important visions that humanity has ever been given.

Kabir, unique amongst all the great teachers of humanity, did not want to create a new religion, because he believed that all religions failed to lead to the direct connection of the One. Kabir, unique amongst all mystical poets, did not want to be revered as a mystical poet. He wanted to inspire each person to become the poet of their own sacred existence.

When I plunged into Kabir about eight years ago, I realized that I was meeting the most scalding, the most searing, the most passionate, the most lucid, the most fierce, the most naked, the most honest, human, divine voice I could possibly meet. Something else became clear to me: Kabir, in the streets of Banaras in the fifteenth century, lived through the death and rebirth process that we’re now going through on a global scale.

He was born into this next evolutionary truth. He was born into the complete, embodied, divine human. He was turned to gold. He was engoldened. He was transfigured, and his poetry is the extraordinary witness to that transfiguration process, which, I believe, is now happening on a global scale.

Rumi has returned to intoxicate and illuminate the heart mind of the planet. Rumi expands and explodes the heart truth of God, the glorious, tenderness of the life of God.  Kabir brings in the lacerating and noble truth of the divine experience. The two of them together can give us a convincing and empowering vision of how to put divine love into radical, transfiguring action at a time when we need that vision like oxygen.

For me, Kabir is far more than a poet. Kabir is an initiatory field as expansive as Rumi, and as radical and revolutionary as Jesus. To come through grace into the initiatory field of Kabir is to be exploded from within, free of dogma, free of religion, free of constriction, free of trauma, free of karmic shadow, so as to be able to taste the splendor of divine identity and to be invited to live it in the extraordinary depths of ordinary life.

This is Kabir’s great cry of revolution. It’s freedom from all systems, except the system that is taught directly to the soul in adoration of the One. How amazing! Finally—a liberation from all the patriarchal dominations.

Richard: You’re speaking of something very explosive and energetic on the one hand and very disciplined and focused on the other. How have you integrated these two dynamics in your own life?

Andrew: For me, they’re two sides of the same mystery. For me, the divine is both absolute peace and absolute compassion in a marriage of opposites. The absolute peace is what I would call the father aspect of the divine. Shakti is the great passion of the divine.

I’ve discovered that like, I think, all seekers who are trying to both embody and experience the divine, I need two central kinds of practice. I’ve needed cool practices that can give me direct access to the great peace. I’ve also needed what I would call hot practices that enable me to keep the heart in a state of fiery longing and adoration and passion, so that the golden fire of divine passion can circulate throughout the entire being and start transfiguring the being.

So you’re working on keeping yourself steady and stable in divine peace so that you can open up ever more intensely to divine passion and to the energy that that passion gives you to fulfill your soul’s deep mission.

Richard: That’s very powerful. What you say has to do with purpose, and many people are becoming more interested in purpose, even in the business world.

Andrew: Well, they can greenwash anything, can’t they?

Richard: Yes. That’s the whole point. I read articles asking people, what is your purpose in life? What moves you? In the business world, you’re supposed to say it’s fitting into some incredibly trivial job. That’s the answer you’re supposed to give, and that’s all well and good. It’s worse if you actually believe it.

Andrew: You can’t really have a truly transformative purpose within the current business structure. How could you possibly, since they’re all worshiping a fundamentalism of the bottom line?

They’re trying to apply Band-Aids to gaping, ghastly, gushing wounds, which won’t be staunched by these semihypocritical fantasies. We all know this. Let’s stop pretending. There’s no way we can go forward without a radical restructuring of the structures of human society—political, economic, and otherwise.

We’re facing an apocalyptic climate collapse. We’re facing an apocalyptic economic collapse. We’re facing the apocalyptic collapse of all known systems. That’s the dreadful news, and the good news, because only through that collapse can any kind of authentic divine humanity can be created.

It’s by no means certain that it will be created. But we must gamble everything on it being born out of the ashes of this destruction, because the mystics know that is possible. That’s what I’m going for, and that’s what those who are awake to the evolutionary thrust of mystical reality are going for. What else is there to go for at this moment but the potential birth of the new kind of humanity out of this madness?

Richard: The rhetoric of 100 years ago focused on revolution. Today people are much more skittish about revolution, because the revolutions of the twentieth century made things worse.

Andrew: No external revolution is going to work. We’ve exhausted all of those. The socialist revolution was supposed to save us. The capitalist revolution was supposed to save us. None of those external revolutions could ever have been able to save us.

 We’ve come to a threshold when there will have to be revolutionary, evolutionary change leading to a radical restructuring of all institutions on the planet; otherwise we’ll die out. If you look at the history of evolution in the natural world, you see that it always proceeds not in an orderly way, but by apocalyptic crises. We’ve come to one of those absolutely insane, irrationally disastrous crises, which, from an unattached point of view, is also supreme opportunity.

Those who know this have to go deep into their spiritual lives to discover their deathless awareness. They have to start acting with canny compassion in the world and start witnessing the divine human life as far as they can to inspire others to do all they can, inwardly and outwardly, to dance with the great evolutionary dance of death and rebirth that’s potentially reshaping everything.

That’s what the great ones are summoning us to. Why not embrace that? Be grateful you’ve come to a time where all your illusions and fantasies are not going to work, that you’re faced with this scalding and terrifying truth. You can either be miserable about it or rush into its flames, burn away, become one with the One, and live as a divine human being, giving everything in joy for the sheer sake of giving everything.

That’s liberation, that’s freedom, and that’s what a great horrific crisis like ours can give to those who are sincere and authentic.

Richard: Yes. Ram Dass once said that no matter what’s going to happen, I still have to do my inner work.

Andrew: Even more so. The worse it gets, the more the challenge to the lovers is to stay turned to the divine. In an amazing poem, Rumi says, “The whole world could be choked with thorns, but a lover’s heart will stay a rose garden. The wheel of heaven could wind to a halt, but the world of lovers will go on turning. Even if every being grew sad, a lover’s heart will still stay fresh, vibrant, light.”

That’s the real voice of the beloved speaking to us in this crisis. You say you’re interested in mystical transformation. You’ve been born in the most terrifying transformative period of human history. How lucky you are, because you won’t be able to hide in stupidity. You won’t be able to hide in greed. You won’t be able to hide in lust. You won’t be able to hide in paralysis. Wherever you hide, you’ll be beaten out of your hiding place by the storms of annihilation, so get out and dance in the wild rain. Give yourself over to abandoned love. Give your life for love, and gamble your life away with heroic passion and humble adoration and humor for justice and compassion. Let things fall where they may, because that’s the only way in which you’ll ever taste the freedom of enlightenment.

Richard: What would you suggest that someone do in practical terms?

Andrew: Get one simple practice and do it incessantly in the core of their lives. All of the great mystics in all of the traditions have said there’s one practice that truly helps, and that’s saying the name of God as you truly love God. It doesn’t matter what name you use, whether it’s Hindu or Buddhist or Christian.

Use it in the core of your being, turn to it, return to it, and remember it. Say it incessantly in the core of the core of your being, and saturate your mind and your heart and your body with it. It will give you power. It will give you patience. It will give you strength. It will give you energy. It will give you passion. It will give you nobility. It will give you a pillar of fire in the core of you that you can rely on.

This is not poetry. This is what Kabir knows, Rumi knows. I know this. This is how I practice. I don’t practice the fancy practices. I get down to the remembrance of the name of God. I recite the name of God in the core of myself. I return to that; it fills me with everything I need, and puts me in the way of the grace that teaches me what I need to be and do.

That practice is available to the whole of humanity. Ramakrishna, the great Bengali saint of the nineteenth century, was asked what was the appropriate practice for the Kali Yuga, for this terrible period that we’re in. He said it’s japa. It’s saying the name of God. Just say the name of God. The grace is pouring down on this terrible time to give infinite strength and infinite inspiration to sincere seekers saying the name of God. But don’t believe me, and don’t believe Ramakrishna. Try it; you’ll find out.

The very simple practices are the most important ones. Choose one great mystical practice to practice. Remembrance of the name of God would be the best.

Choose one prayer that challenges you at the deepest level. Choose a really dangerous prayer like the Prayer of St. Francis, which asks you to become an instrument of peace. Think deeply about what it means to become an instrument of peace. It means to be dead to yourself, to your full self. It means being utterly powerless in the hand of God, like a pen that God uses to writes whatever God wants.

Choose a really dangerous prayer and pray that. Choose a sacred, physical practice like sacred dance or sacred yoga so your body can be filled with the energy of divine love, and you’re going to be OK. You’re going to be able to connect heart, mind, soul, and body to the One, and that’s what essential. Beyond religion, beyond dogma, beyond the rest of it, that’s what’s essential.

I hope I’m being of some use to you.

Richard: Yes, this is very eloquent.

Andrew: I’m doing the best I can.

Richard: Over thirty years ago, you first became known to the public in relation to Mother Meera. How do you look back on that situation today? What did it teach you?

Andrew: I look back on it as if I’ve lived through both the illusions and the desires of a whole generation, because I think my whole generation began with perhaps an exaggerated enthusiasm for Eastern religion. That was compounded in my own case because I was born in India, so I inherited the great religious freedom of India but also the great religious addiction of India to the guru system. I had to live that out until it exploded in my face and nearly destroyed my life.

Looking back on that whole terrible, amazing period, I’m extremely grateful for three reasons. First, my experience of the collapse of the guru system pushed me into the most savage and painful and lacerating Dark Night, which lasted ten years. It gave me a comprehensive understanding of the Dark Night process, which I can now share with other people, since I’ve come out the other side.

The second thing I’m grateful for is that if you have truly experienced the horror and the shadow of power, you are given a permanent bitch-slap and a permanent teaching in how not to exercise power falsely. As a teacher who can collect many projections, I have made it my absolute purpose to remain a seeker, not to claim enlightenment, not to be a guru, but to be a friend, encouraging others on an evolutionary journey that goes far beyond any of our capacities to understand.

That experience liberated me from a whole false vision of enlightenment. I’m come to understand and experience enlightenment not as a stable omniscience, but as an entry into an ever-expanding field of divine love and divine knowledge. This happens to be far more accurate than the traditional picture. It’s the true vision that the greatest mystics I’ve discovered have come to.

The third reason that I’m extremely grateful is that having suffered both the stupidity of religion and the shadow of the guru system, I find myself where Kabir says we must be—out in the open, naked in direct communion with the real. Being rooted into this naked communion with the real is the most thrilling experience that one can ever have, because it compels you to become authentic about your experience, claim responsibility for your experience, and live each moment with as much divine intensity and truth as you can.

I could never have done that if I’d continued to project my golden shadow onto a fake guru. I had to reclaim that golden shadow, take responsibility for its gold. So that enabled an engoldening process to begin. It enabled me to come into my true divine awareness and to start doing my own authentic, divine work and inspire others to come into their divine awareness, do their authentic divine work, and become part of a new birth, a new religious mysticism, a universal mysticism that is hierarchical in its understanding of the stages but nonhierarchical in its sharing of the wisdom.

Richard: You say you went through this Dark Night of the Soul for ten years. How did you live through it on a day-by-day basis?

Andrew: The Dark Night can drive you mad and can so lacerate your heart that you can hardly breathe for hours. The real Dark Night is an extremely terrifying and extreme process, as we can see in the world around us.

What I discovered through the grace of Rumi and the divine is that the way to survive in the Dark Night is to have a map of what it means. You have to know that what’s happening to you is actually recusing you from you. You have to know that and to cling to that like a life raft.

I discovered that if you could keep up a constant, incessant stream of devotional prayer in the core of your heart, you could just about stay sane. You would be given the guidance, the dreams, the grace that you need if you just plunged into incessant prayer.

I realized that I wouldn’t remain sane if I didn’t pray all the time. That led to a succession of liberating, ecstatic awakenings, because through your desperation, your whole consciousness becomes saturated with divine presence. In the end that rescues you from a false vision of yourself and baptizes you in divine awareness.

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Printed in the  Spring 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Johnson, Kelly, "The Apocryphon of James " Quest 108:2, pg 37-40

By Kelly Johnson

Several years ago I stumbled upon a story that captivated me to the very depths of my soul (and still does). It is the story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scriptures, a collection of fifty-two Gnostic Christian texts, buried in the Egyptian desert for over sixteen hundred years and unexpectedly dug up in 1945.

Since learning of the Nag Hammadi discovery, I have spent hours and hours in utter fascination researching the story of these ancient texts. Doing this has led me to delve into the early history of Christianity from shortly after the death of Jesus, around AD 32, to the fourth century, when the Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity as the formal religion of the Roman Empire. I have learned of the many different Christian sects that emerged during this period, and have become interested by the conflict and unrest that the beliefs of these sects provoked in the leaders of the Catholic church.

As I have read the texts of the Nag Hammadi library, several have resonated deeply with me, but it is the Apocryphon of James that has inspired me the most. The Apocryphon of James, or The Secret Teachings of James, is found in the first of the thirteen codices of this library. This codex, comprising five texts, is known as as the Jung Codex, because shortly after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi scriptures in 1945, the Carl Jung Foundation purchased it. At that point it had been smuggled out of Egypt into America and found its way onto the black market.

The discovery of the Nag Hammadi scriptures, deemed to be the most significant collection of lost Christian writings to have ever been rediscovered, makes for an enthralling tale. The story began in a barren, desolate area of upper Egypt, beneath the rugged rock cliffs of Jabel-al-Tarif. In December 1945, an Arab peasant by the name of Muhammed Al-Sammon, with seven of his peasant friends, was digging for a soft soil called sabakh, which he would use to fertilize his crops. The cliffs of Jabel-al-Tarif are located along the right bank of the Nile, approximately five miles north of the small town of Nag Hammadi. These mountains are laden with hundreds of caves, which served as ancient burial sites and tombs in the Sixth Dynasty (2345–2181 BC), and which centuries afterwards were the dwelling grounds of mystics and hermits.

On the day of this discovery, Muhammed and his friends were digging around a large boulder under the cliffs when they hit something hard. They found a sealed earthenware jar, approximately six feet tall, buried beneath the soil. Although they were initially reluctant to break the jar open for fear that it might be inhabited by a jinn, or evil spirit, Muhammed and his friends finally smashed it open. But they did not find a jinn. As the jar shattered into pieces, they noticed tiny specks of gold flying through the air, which turned out to be small fragments of papyrus, delicate and brittle after centuries of being buried in the desert. The jar had contained thirteen papyrus codices bound in leather. Scholars estimated that the books were over 1600 years old. These books came to be known as the Nag Hammadi scriptures.

Most of the texts were written in Coptic, the latest form of the ancient Egyptian language, spoken from the second through the thirteenth centuries AD and written in an adapted Greek alphabet. The texts were mostly Gnostic treatises, most of which had been initially written in Greek and thought to have been translated into Coptic around the fourth century. The Nag Hammadi collection included a translation of a portion of Plato’s Republic and a set of three Greek wisdom texts that were part of the Corpus Hermeticum or “Hermetic body” of texts.

Gnosticism was the name given to a category of ancient religious ideas originating in the first and second centuries AD. Claiming to offer secret traditions about Jesus, these teachings focused on an intuitive process of  knowing oneself at the deepest level. The Gnostics believed that through such an inner knowing, one would also know God.

The texts were discovered near the ruins of the ancient Chenoboskion monastery, an early Christian community consisting of monks, nuns, ascetics, and hermits. As a result, these texts are also known as the Chenoboskion manuscripts.

The monastic movement is traced back to the monk Anthony the Great, an esteemed religious figure of his time, who made this area his home in 270–71. So profound was the impact of Anthony that he has been called the father of Christian monasticism. This monastery was later dedicated to, and renamed after, Pachomius, another influential religious figure of the time, who had converted to Christianity while at the monastery.

James Robinson, one of the translators of the Nag Hammadi scriptures, has suggested that the books of this library may have belonged to the monks of the Pachomius monastery and that they buried the books in the jar for safekeeping. Robinson believes this may have occurred after the Festal Letter written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in 367 AD. Every year, the bishop would write a letter dictating the date on which Easter was to be celebrated that year. In the letter of 367, Athanasius also listed the twenty-seven books that were to be read by the faithful as sacred scripture. Because this list sets out the New Testament as we know it today, Athanasius is thought to have created the canon of the New Testament. He condemned any other books aside from these (apart from a few that, though not canonical, could be read for edification, such as the Didache, or “Teaching,” of the Twelve Apostles and The Shepherd of Hermas). All others were forbidden to be read or owned.

I have been impressed by the immense diversity of views within the Christianity of that period. At that point, the religion’s formal structure and the ultimate direction that it would take had not yet been defined or organized. As a result, many currents of Christian thought flowed during this era. Over fifty gospels were circulating within the various Christian sects, and each sect subscribed to a select few of these gospels as their own. Even within the Gnostic framework, there were many different variations of religious thought.

Some scholars have suggested that the recipient of James’s letter may have been the Gnostic teacher Cerinthus. Cerinthus was a prominent and controversial figure in the Christianity of the latter half of the first century and the first part of the second century. Educated in the wisdom teachings of the Egyptians, he maintained that his religious inspiration had come to him from the angelic realm. Cerinthus lived and taught in Ephesus, the city where the apostle John was believed to have gone after his imprisonment on the island of Patmos.

Much has been written of the enmity between Cerinthus and John. Some believed that John had written both Revelation and the Gospel attributed to him to refute the claims of Cerinthus. To add further complexity, the Alogi, a Christian sect of the second century, asserted that the Gospel of John and Revelation had been written by Cerinthus, not by John.

Cerinthus used a gospel similar to one used by a sect called the Ebionites, which taught that Jesus was not born of a virgin but of Mary and Joseph, and that the Spirit of God descended upon him at his baptism and left him at his crucifixion. 

During the late second century, the bishop Irenaeus of Lyon declared that there could only be one church, the Catholic church, and that no viewpoints other than the Catholic view were to be tolerated. Iraneus published a work, Against the Heresies, attacking Gnostic views with vehemence. By AD 200, the proto-catholic church had become an institution dominated by a hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. Any religious views that were not in alignment with theirs were denounced as heresy.

Nevertheless, the confrontations and challenges that the Gnostics and others made to Christian orthodoxy profoundly influenced Catholic leaders and teachers and in turn shaped the course of Christianity.

In the fourth century, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, possession of any books that were seen as heretical now became a criminal offense. These books were burned or destroyed and their owners persecuted.

Many of the monasteries in this period were devoted to copying or translating religious texts and possessed large libraries, so it is logical to assume that the Pachomius monastery would have had such a library. Conceivably, instead of burning these texts, as Athanasius had ordered, the monks buried them in the desert.

The Apocryphon of James is one of these texts. The book was probably first written in Greek (although it claims to have been written in Hebrew; in any case, the original is lost) in the first half of the second century. It discusses secret teachings presented to Peter and Jesus’s brother James by Jesus.

Scholars of the Nag Hammadi scriptures have come to believe that Jesus offered two levels of teachings: one meant for the masses and for most of Jesus’s disciples, the other reserved for a select few who were able to comprehend the deeper meanings. It is believed that Jesus revealed his secret teachings to only a chosen few disciples within his inner circle; to all others he offered the more general teachings and parables that were easier to comprehend.  The Apocryphon of James discusses these secret teachings, claiming to highlight the inner processes by which one enters into the kingdom of heaven.

The gospel takes the form an epistle written by James to a third person, describing a conversation between the risen Jesus, Peter, and James himself. The text also mentions a previous letter that James had written ten months previously and sent to this same person, but this letter has never been located.

According to James’s letter, Peter does not understand the meaning of what Jesus is saying, but James does, albeit with a limited degree of comprehension.

 “Do you not desire to be filled?” Jesus asks James and Peter. Jesus attempts to explain the principle of gnosis to them, articulating that gnosis, or knowledge, is the path through which salvation can be attained. “Know yourselves,” he urges. Errors occur when one lives under a veil of ignorance, Jesus explains; gnosis occurs when one moves beyond ignorance, and beyond reason, to a higher interior state, which is an intuitive knowing. This knowing is reflective rather than rational, and occurs through observation, or experience. Jesus talks of the importance of emptying the physical vessel so that it may be filled “with all that is fresh and pure.” He instructs James and Peter to “be filled and leave no space within you empty.” When they are filled with the fullness of God, they are ready to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

We can understand Jesus to mean that when we sit in stillness and empty our mind of ego, we are capable of the spiritual receptivity that allows us to touch the divine energy within us—the deepest, most essential aspect of ourselves. “Understand what the great Light is,” Jesus urges. Jesus tells James and Peter that to truly know themselves in this manner is to know God. It is to have a direct access and pathway to God, without the mediation of others, whether they be rabbis, priests, or bishops. To know oneself, Jesus reminds James and Peter, at the very deepest level, is to know God.

Jesus tells James and Peter that he has shown them the path to Christhood, emphasizing that this path is for them to pursue only when they are ready. There is an inference here that each of us comes to this path when our souls are mature and prepared, and not before. Jesus tells both James and Peter that they are to rely on, and listen to, their own inner wisdom; this self-governance is to be gradually cultivated within each person as they learn to walk upon, and honor, their personal path. “Shame on you who are in need of an advocate,” Jesus admonishes. We do not need others to direct our spiritual path for us, or to provide us with instruction.

 Jesus then tells James and Peter that we are to each work on ourselves for the sake of others. This is our highest responsibility: to develop ourselves so that we may be better equipped to offer the deepest level of love, compassion, and wisdom to all of humanity. This continual self-development will increase our capacity to offer service, not only to those we know intimately, but to those with whom we come into contact superficially and casually. We are expected to always give our best, with Jesus as our example. “Blessings on you who have acquired grace for yourself,” he tells James and Peter. With elevated understanding and awareness, with the attainment of truth, comes accountability. For all of us.

Furthermore, each of differs in our distinctive qualities, the relative maturity of our souls, our personal and cultural experiences, and our perceptions of the world around us. Consequently, we must know that there will always be differing viewpoints. For those of us who model our lives after any of the great spiritual masters, whether Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha, it is important to see the highest in those around us, to open to those who hold differing viewpoints, and to refrain from imposing judgment on views that differ from our own. We must model acceptance. We must look deep within, to know ourselves, to touch the core of our hearts and thus be able to affirm and articulate our own personal truth with clarity—and to do so in such a way that each of us may walk our own path with quiet strength, conviction, and an acceptance of the paths of others. No human-developed system, religious or otherwise, can ever fulfill our deepest needs, nor can it ever soothe the restless voice within. These can only be appeased through an inner knowing of ourselves, through a process of honest, inner questioning whereby we open to our deepest self. The Gnostics referred to this place as our Godhead, the essence of who we are deep within. It is in this interior space, where we are able to remember the sacred essence of our inner divinity, where we listen to our soul’s call and affirm our deepest truth.

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Sources

Decoding Jesus’ Relationship with Mary Magdalene. Video documentary, CNN.

The Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library with Gilles Quispel. Video documentary.

Gnosis: The Unknown Jesus. Video documentary.

Gnostic Gospels: The Lost Gospels Full Documentary. Video documentary.

Jones, Pete Owen. Gnosis: The Lost Gospels. Video documentary, BBC, 2008.

Meyer, Marvin, ed. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.

Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief. New York: Random House, 2003.

———. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House, 1979.

Kelly Johnson is a Christian mystic, writer, poet, spiritual counselor and student of the Nag Hammadi scriptures.  A registered nurse for over twenty-six years, married to the same wonderful man for thirty-six years, Kelly is currently working on her first book, a set of devotional reflections based on the writings of Meister Eckhart.

 

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Printed in the  Spring 2020  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation:  Leland, Kurt, "The Multiple Masters of Cyril Scott " Quest 108:2, pg 21-27

By Kurt Leland

Several years ago, I was contacted by Desmond Scott, son of the British Theosophist, author, and composer Cyril Scott (1879–1970), about contributing to an anthology of essays about his father’s life, books, and music. I was asked for chapters about Scott’s chamber music and writings on the occult, including such classics as Music: Its Secret Influence throughout the Ages (1933) and the so-called Initiate series: The Initiate: Some Impressions of a Great Soul (1920), The Initiate in the New World (1927), and The Initiate in the Dark Cycle (1932). This anthology, The Cyril Scott Companion, was published in 2018. Since then, I have continued to explore the relationship between Scott’s life and work, including the autobiographical background of the Initiate series, which I have come to see as a vast panorama of the spiritual path as described in Theosophical teachings, developed from Scott’s personal encounters with various teachers he perceived as Masters.

The Initiate series is neither a fully truthful memoir nor completely imaginary fiction. It would be a stretch even to call it semiautobiographical. Perhaps it could be labeled as “creative nonfiction,” a relatively new literary genre. But perhaps it is best to think of it—and of Scott’s multiple Masters—as life enhanced into truth.

Cyril Scott was born near Liverpool, showed early aptitude for music, and as a teenager studied piano and composition at a famous conservatory of music in Frankfurt, Germany, from which he graduated at the age of eighteen. He began his musical career in Liverpool, moved to London, traveled extensively in Europe, and  toured America for five months in 1920–21. He spent the rest of his long life in London and in villages in the south of England.

As a composer, Scott achieved the height of his fame before the First World War and was largely neglected thereafter. As a writer on the occult, however, he became increasingly well-known. The Initiate series has remained continuously in print to the present day. 

Brought up in the Church of England, Scott passed through a period of agnosticism as a young man. He became interested in Theosophy after hearing Annie Besant speak in 1904. He soon discovered Indian yoga philosophy and practices, found an Indian guru, and began calling himself a yogi. He joined the Theosophical Society in 1914, at the age of thirty-five, and remained a member for the rest of his life.

Central to Scott’s personal beliefs, writings, and music were the notions of Masters, initiates, and initiation—and this was true, in a sense, even before he encountered Theosophy. While studying in Germany, he met the German symbolist poet Stefan George, who admitted him to an exclusive circle of personal disciples who thought of him as “the revered Master.”

Mystical yet autocratic, George was fastidious in his taste in literature, art, and music, and basked in the hero worship of the young, exclusively male artists, poets, and philosophers who surrounded and emulated him. Scott composed music to George’s verses, and George sponsored performances of his music. But around 1900, Scott fell from grace, ostensibly for arrogant and immature behavior, and was banned from the circle. Scott was devastated. In 1904, he was readmitted, only to be ejected again about ten years later, in part because of his interest in Theosophy.

Luckily, Scott was able to maintain a close lifelong friendship with the Art Nouveau painter, book designer, and stained-glass worker Melchior Lechter, another member of George’s group. Thirteen years older than Scott, Lechter was also called “revered Master,” though not because he wanted disciples. Although deeply spiritual, he thought of himself as a master craftsman in the tradition of the German medieval guilds—and dressed the part. His enthusiasm for The Secret Doctrine goaded Scott to begin reading the book in 1905. Lechter joined the Theosophical Society in 1910 and traveled to Adyar that year to meet Annie Besant.

In 1901, Scott met the next of his multiple Masters in Liverpool—the now forgotten French poet and socialist Charles Bonnier. Thirty-seven years older than Scott, Bonnier was a professor of French literature at the University of Liverpool. Tired of depressing boarding houses and bothersome landladies, the two became housemates on the basis of their mutual love of art. Bonnier encouraged Scott to compose poetry as well as music. Under Bonnier’s guidance, Scott produced several books of poetry, including translations of Charles Baudelaire and Stefan George. Here, then, was the Master as artistic mentor and taskmaster. Scott called Bonnier “a great soul, and a great artist in spirit” on the basis of his being “pronouncedly unselfish” (Scott, Years, 54, original emphasis). He was a good foil for the vanity of Stefan George.

 About 1906, Scott began acquiring spiritual Masters to add to his pantheon of artistic ones. Robert King, a clairvoyant Theosophist, made a deep impression on him. King had joined the Theosophical Society in 1892. He was also a member of the London Spiritualist Alliance and lectured extensively for both organizations. He became a darling of the London social scene, a favorite at the salons and dinner parties of spiritually minded hostesses.

King and Scott were both aware of Besant’s and C.W. Leadbeater’s famous book Thought-Forms (1905), which included images of how music was clairvoyantly perceived in shapes and colors. Born into a family of chimney sweeps and completely uneducated about music, King claimed to have this ability. We do not know how King and Scott met, but Scott once explained in an interview that he would often improvise for King at the piano and King would tell him what he saw clairvoyantly. When Scott joined the Theosophical Society, King was his sponsor. Years later, Scott would refer to King as an initiate.

In 1905, Scott had become enamored of the writings of the late Swami Vivekananda. About 1907, he met Swami Abhedananda, an associate of Vivekananda who had taken over the Vedanta Society, founded by the latter in New York City. Scott thought of Abhedananda as a genuine Mahatma (“great soul”), a person “of irreproachable character and wisdom-fraught saintliness,” an exemplar of “benignity, compassion and tolerance” (Scott, Years, 152).

Abhedananda had come to England to establish a local chapter of the Vedanta Society. Scott became involved in the project, which sadly failed. He was forlorn when his guru, who had taught him various yogic practices, returned to America. However, Scott had also begun to experience mystical states of peace and joy as a result of his exposure to yoga and sought ways to portray these states in music. Scott saw his guru as a spiritual Master and himself as a disciple, a yogic initiate. He recorded some of his guru’s teachings in two anonymously published books, The Real Tolerance (1914) and The Way of the Childish (1916).

Women also played a role in Scott’s occult development. First, there was Henrietta Louisa Stevenson, who had married the brother of the famous author Robert Louis Stevenson. She was recently widowed when Scott met her at a fashionable coastal resort in France in 1902. Scott was briefly in love with her daughter, but was also deeply influenced by philosophical conversations with Mrs. Stevenson about love and marriage. She had learned her unconventional views from her husband. Scott called her “the apostle of non-jealousy” (Scott, Years, 63, original emphasis).

 Mrs. Stevenson’s views could easily be dismissed as advocating free love, or open marriage, or even a form of what is now called polyamory, an agreement between committed life partners to consider their relationship as central but to allow for and not to interfere with satellite relationships that might be more transient—and to maintain complete transparency with everyone involved. Scott seems to have received these views as eminently practical and compassionate means of negotiating the waywardness of the human heart and the social, legal, and psychological traps that people constantly fell into. These included socially approved but loveless or sexless marriages, romantic passions that subsided all too soon after marriage, and the jealousy that resulted from perceiving a partner as a possession to be controlled rather than a person to be understood with tolerance and forgiveness. Scott wove some of Henrietta’s teachings into The Real Tolerance.

Another influential figure in Scott’s development was a medium named Nelsa Chaplin. She and her husband, Alex, ran an alternative health resort called The Firs in rural England. Robert King frequented the place, as did Scott’s future wife, the novelist Rose Allatini. Perhaps she and Scott met there.

	Cyril Scott in 1913, a year before he joined the Theosophical Society

At The Firs, founded in 1910, Theosophical topics such as auras and thought forms were often under discussion. Nelsa and Alex joined the TS in 1919. Alex was interested in color and sound therapy. Nelsa was a musician and improvised at the piano, often in trance. As a child, she was able to perceive nature spirits (elemental beings such as gnomes and fairies) and devas (“shining ones”—a term borrowed from Sanskrit to refer to angelic beings). Devas were said to communicate to each other in a language of color and sound. Nelsa was supposedly able to “bring through” such beings in her music. She told Scott that he too was a channel for the music of nature spirits and devas. For the rest of his life, Scott experimented along these lines, developing a symbolic means of representing nature spirits, humans, devas, and Masters with specially colored harmony and scales.

For Scott, the most important aspect of his friendship with Nelsa was that she claimed to speak for Master KH (Koot Hoomi), a member of the Occult Hierarchy described in Theosophical teachings and a sponsoring founder of the Theosophical Society. A light-skinned Kashmiri with a Western education, Master KH was said to reside in Tibet. He too was a musician, and played a custom-made instrument installed in an internal wall of his home. It had a piano keyboard on one side and an organ keyboard on the other. Scott thought of himself as a disciple of KH. Music: Its Secret Influence was largely made up of material channeled by KH through Nelsa.

By 1916, Scott had become aware of the teachings of an American yogi named Pierre Bernard, whose life and contributions to the development of yoga in America were chronicled in a biography by Robert Love, The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America (2010). Bernard taught a form of Tantric (sex polarity) yoga. He had an ashram for the wealthy in the Hudson River Valley, and was frequently in trouble with conventional morality and the law. One of his students had come to England to proclaim the Gospel of Oom, and Scott spent a year or so in training with him. In 1920–21, Scott toured America for several months as pianist and composer and visited Bernard’s ashram.

This brings us to the 1920 publication of the first book in the Initiate series, The Initiate: Some Impressions of a Great Soul. Once again, Scott concealed his identity as author—the byline read “by a Pupil.” In a later volume in the series, published in 1932, he called the narrator “Charles Broadbent” and identified him as a poet. Finally, in 1935, Scott admitted he was the author of the series, though he claimed that by that time this fact was an open secret.

Scott and his wife separated during the Second World War, and she lived the rest of her long life in close companionship with Janet Melanie Ailsa Mills, a Theosophical writer whose pen-name was H.K. Challoner. Scott himself settled down with Marjorie Hartston, a clairvoyant who was said to be able to perceive and communicate with Master KH.

Discouraged by declining interest in his music, Scott decided to cease composing—but a message from his Master told him there was still work to do in this genre on behalf of humanity. He spent his remaining decades producing dozens of musical works, many of them unperformed during his lifetime, as well as a series of books on alternative healing.

Before beginning our tour of the spiritual path outlined in Scott’s Initiate series, I should clarify several things. The initiate that is the first book’s subject is named Justin Moreward Haig. Throughout The Initiate, Scott refers to him as Moreward. In later books, he is called MH (New World) or JMH (Dark Cycle). I will use JMH from this point on.

Scott’s schema of occult initiation is far less specific than that presented in Leadbeater’s The Masters and the Path. Scott refers to pupils, disciples, initiates, great initiates, adepts, and Masters without explaining differences in degree of occult mastery. For Leadbeater, a pupil is not yet an initiate but may be studying under one. A disciple is an initiate studying under a Master. Initiates are of four degrees, and those who have completed the fourth are called Adepts. Masters have passed through the fifth initiation—and there are several initiations beyond that.

As the Initiate series progresses, JMH’s occult responsibilities expand. In The Initiate, he works locally and has a pupil, the narrator. He could therefore be a first-, second-, or third-degree initiate in Leadbeater’s schema. In New World, JMH has an ashram of disciples and is capable of performing miracles. He may now be an adept, a fourth-degree initiate. In Dark Cycle, he begins to work internationally, perhaps in the final stages of training to become a full-fledged Master.

In An Outline of Modern Occultism (1935), Scott listed some characteristics of initiates and Masters. They are free of vanity and selfishness, full of tolerance and understanding, as well as “unconditional love for Humanity.” They see everything “through the eyes of wisdom” and participate in “an unconditional consciousness of joy” and want others to “share in that felicity.” Furthermore, they are “guides and teachers—not dictators” (Scott, Outline, 20).

Scott dedicates The Initiate to “the Great Soul [i.e., Mahatma] whose name is concealed under the name Justin Moreward Haig.” Probably Scott means Swami Abhedananda. But JMH is almost certainly a composite character: the social setting of the book suggests the milieu of Robert King, and some of JMH’s teachings are traceable to Henrietta Stevenson.  

The first half of The Initiate is a hilarious spoof of Georgian social conventions. There is no plot, just a series of vignettes in which JMH appears in various social situations and dissects people’s physical, familial, emotional, mental, and spiritual dilemmas with disarming directness and delicious irony.

The second half of the book, “The Circuitous Journey,” is a somewhat plodding parable of the spiritual evolution of two souls, Antonius and Cynara, who alternately help and hinder each other’s spiritual awakening as they struggle to understand why they are together and where they are traveling to. They spend many days (representing lifetimes) passing through various scenes in which they either succeed or fail to learn some lesson, and periodically encounter spiritual teachers who do or do not help. When they have finally learned the difference between selfish and unselfish love, they are ready to be taken under the tutelage of their Master, Pallomides, who has been guiding them from behind the scenes during the entire journey. They are given the task of getting married and having a son who will become a great spiritual teacher. Throughout “The Circuitous Journey,” Scott has presumably been describing the trials of the probationary path, the set of trials through which aspirants must pass to prove themselves ready for the teachings of a Master.

The Initiate in the New World (1927) begins with an introduction in which Scott discusses the aftermath of publication of The Initiate—reams of mail speculating on the identity of JMH or demanding personal interviews with him. Scott reminded his readers that he had told them at the end of The Initiate that his Master “had gone to another part of the world and left him no forwarding address” and was now “thousands of miles away from my home” (Scott, New World, viii).This was true—Swami Abhedananda had returned to India in 1921. Thus it is not surprising that personal characteristics and yogic teachings of Scott’s new guru, Pierre Bernard, have been added to those of Abhedananda. JMH’s teachings now center on yoga, relationships, and sexuality, as we might expect of a Tantric guru such as Bernard. But there is a graveyard scene involving JMH’s work with the lost soul of a child—likely a tribute to Robert King.

Unlike its predecessor, New World has a plot. The poet Charles Broadbent is confronted with a dilemma. He has fallen in love with Clare Delafield, a vivacious blonde resident of the ashram (which Scott has relocated to Boston). However, JMH tells Broadbent that he should enter into an “occult marriage” with the serious, dark-haired writer Viola Brind. The Masters wish that such a marriage should take place to bring a special child into the world. After much inward and outward struggle between the three, Charles and Viola decide to acquiesce in the Masters’ wishes.

From other sources, we know that Master KH, as channeled by Nelsa Chaplin, had encouraged Scott to marry the dark-haired writer Rose Allatini, a frequent guest at The Firs. The ostensible purpose was to facilitate reincarnation of Scott’s beloved Swami Vivekananda. In the end, the Scotts’ first child was a girl who manifested few characteristics of spiritual adeptship. Though their second child, Desmond, became well-known as a theater director and sculptor in Canada, he also was probably not the reincarnation of the swami.

It should now be clear that “The Circuitous Journey” was written to sort out Scott’s feelings about this occult marriage before the actual civil marriage took place in 1921. If Viola Brind was Rose Allatini, then who was Clare Delafield? I have identified her as an earlier love of Scott’s, a vivacious blond opera singer from America named Maud Le Vinson Roosevelt (a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt), whom Scott had met in Paris around 1905. Maud’s chaperone was a female cousin who, like Rose Allatini, was a writer. For several months, the three went about together, much as Charles, Clare, and Viola do in New World.

Maud apparently rejected Scott as a romantic partner, though the two became close friends and confidantes. She died in 1912, and Scott memorialized her in a book of poems. Perhaps the competition between Clare and Viola in New World was Scott’s attempt to exorcize his unrequited love for Maud in preparation for his marriage to Rose Allatini. Be that as it may, New World seeks to portray the inner and outer lives of pupils of an initiate as they learn to live and work together and set aside personal desire in favor of altruistic service to humanity.

The Initiate in the Dark Cycle (1932) begins with an introduction in which Scott once again complains about the often unintelligent, even ridiculous demands of letters from his readers. He also quashes a rumor that JMH is James Ingall Wedgwood, a bishop and founder of the Liberal Catholic Church.

The first chapter is a touching and amusing posthumous portrait of Nelsa Chaplin, who died in 1927, and life at The Firs, here called “The Pines.” In the book, Scott dubs her Christabel Portman, “the deva Initiate.” We learn something of her early life, clairvoyant powers, and selfless service to humanity as healer and counselor. We are also given a chance to eavesdrop on the conversations of eccentric residents of The Firs and messages from Master KH as channeled by Nelsa. Charles Broadbent has a new sidekick, Lyall Herbert, a spiritually inclined composer—another alter ego of Scott. And of course JMH reappears to provide teachings on various subjects.

We also meet the droll astrologer “David Anrias” (Brian Anrias Ross), through whom Scott continued to receive messages from Master KH after the death of Nelsa Chaplin. The “dark cycle” of the title reflects astrological predictions made by David.

The book includes discussions by various initiates and Masters on how the Theosophical Society should rebuild itself after a major crisis. Promoted by Annie Besant as an embodiment of the next World Teacher (something like the second coming of Christ), Jiddu Krishnamurti unexpectedly renounced this role in 1929, causing a collapse in membership of the organization. Discussion of the aftermath is one aspect of a larger theme—the national and international political work of the Masters.

The highlight of Dark Cycle is a trip to a mysterious Tudor mansion where Broadbent and Herbert meet one of the two “English Masters” mentioned in Blavatsky’s writings. “Sir Thomas” is probably intended to represent the sixteenth-century philosopher and Catholic saint Sir Thomas More, often put forward by Theosophical speculators as one of the English Masters. Curiously, Sir Thomas wears a skullcap—as did Scott’s literary master Charles Bonnier. Sir Thomas’s fictional home is modeled on a castle in Harlech, Wales, built by Charles Davison, a wealthy former executive of the Eastman-Kodak Corporation, ousted for his socialist/anarchist views. Charles Bonnier was also a socialist (hence the skullcap).

During the First World War, Scott spent summers at Harlech Castle, along with a number of artistic, musical, and literary colleagues. The castle included a piano/organ combination like Master KH’s. Scott was known to play the instrument at Harlech—and Herbert plays its fictional equivalent.

At the end of the book, Broadbent is commissioned by the Masters to write Dark Cycle. Herbert is commissioned to compose a new type of music, guided by the Masters. Master KH appears in a vision, improvising celestial music on the Tibet instrument, and Broadbent and Herbert are passed from JMH to KH as accepted disciples, thereby becoming initiates themselves. JMH prepares to go into seclusion for an extended period—ostensibly to finalize his progression from initiate to Master but also to put him more or less permanently out of reach of the letter writers plaguing Scott for JMH’s whereabouts.

What are we to make of all this? First, the Initiate series is great fun to read—all the more so when we know something of the parallels with Scott’s life and the ingenuity and humor that went into creating the trilogy’s semifictional world. Second, Scott had an unusual capacity to admire anyone who could teach him something about the spiritual path. He may have been overly credulous at times, as in the case of the reincarnation of Vivekananda. Yet his books contain many insightful pages, derived from multiple “Masters,” about such things as love, marriage, art, and humor that are worth considering as useful spiritual teachings—especially the chapter entitled “The Permanent Love-Consciousness” in New World.

But the true value of the series is its panorama of the “circuitous journey” of human spiritual development—the Path of Initiation, as it is called in Theosophical teachings. As “life enhanced into truth,” this panorama transcends the genres of semiautobiographical novel or semifictional memoir to become a quasi-archetypal portrayal of this path.

The stage of “average humanity” is represented by the unenlightened and convention-bound inhabitants of English drawing rooms (Initiate). Then we have the clueless but aspiring Antonius and Cynara, slowly awakening to the lessons about selfishness and selflessness that comprise the Probationary Path (Initiate).

The narrator of the first half of the Initiate is at the stage described in the phrase, “When the pupil is ready, the Master will be forthcoming” (Scott, Initiate, ix). In New World, the narrator is fully committed to the spiritual path, studying under an initiate and learning to negotiate relationships, marriage, sexuality, and “love-consciousness.” Clare, Viola, and Charles represent three development levels within the pupil stage: beginner, experienced, and advanced.

In Dark Cycle, Broadbent and Herbert, as advanced pupils, progress to learn how to serve to humanity through the arts. Christabel Portman, the deva initiate, demonstrates a more advanced stage of such service, using music for healing. Christabel also illustrates one means by which the Masters communicate to their students across a great distance, such as that between the Himalayas and England. She consciously steps aside from her physical body so a Master can temporarily use it to provide direction. David Anrias demonstrates a less advanced means of such communication by tuning in to the Masters via meditation or sensing their presence and hearing them inwardly, even without such tuning in. We could perhaps position Anrias as a first- and Christabel as a second-degree initiate.

Higher yet, we have JMH. We see him serving humanity in all its forms, from average souls in London drawing rooms, perhaps as a third-degree initiate (Initiate), to lost souls wandering after death and living pupils in an ashram, now at the fourth degree (New World), and finally advanced pupils, about to be accepted as disciples of a Master (Dark Cycle). In New World and Dark Cycle, we witness the range of spiritual teachings and powers available to him as an adept preparing for the fifth initiation that will make him a Master.

The Masters themselves finally appear in Dark Cycle—one in the flesh (Sir Thomas) and the other in a waking vision (KH). We see them working as members of the Occult Hierarchy that guides the evolution of the world. Not only do they provide perspective and dole out missions to their human agents on earth, but they are responsible for advancing pupils to the disciple stage and initiates to the Master stage.

To complete this portrait gallery of the Occult Hierarchy, a “Dyan Chohan” (“Lord of Meditation”; Scott’s spelling) briefly appears in New World. This exalted being, representing a level higher even than that of the Masters, is clairvoyantly perceived by Viola. He gives his blessing to Broadbent’s intention to write this very book.

Valuable as this portrait gallery may be as a contribution to understanding the path of initiation, the greatest teaching of the Initiate series is not to be found within any of the books. It lies in the process of artistic combination and spiritual transformation that took people Scott knew in real life and reimagined them as examples of each stage. Whether it was their ability to love (Mrs. Stevenson) or their knowledge of art making (George and Lechter), their exuberant life (Maud Roosevelt) or their joyful service to suffering humanity (Nelsa Chaplin), Scott was able to see the Master in them and be taught.

The initiates and Masters of the trilogy may have been literary inventions, but they were constructed of whatever is best in us. We may be surrounded by our own multiple Masters waiting to teach us how to become initiates—our best and highest selves.

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Sources

Scott, Cyril. The Initiate in the New World. York Beach, Maine: Weiser, 1991.

———. My Years of Indiscretion. London: Mills & Boon, 1924.

———. An Outline of Modern Occultism. London: Routledge, 1935.

Kurt Leland lectures nationally and internationally for the Theosophical Society. He recently released an expanded edition of Otherwhere: A Field Guide for Astral Travelers and is currently working on a little book on clairvoyance for Martin Firrell’s series Modern Theosophy. He has been invited to submit an essay on Annie Besant for a special issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy on nineteenth-century women philosophers writing in English, to be published in 2021.

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