This book by Jonathan Black has left me wondering and I’m not sure what I’m wondering about really. I read it quite quickly which is a fair indication that I enjoyed the reading itself and also that it presented no particular difficulties. That it was accessible as it were but yet I am wondering. Coming towards the end of the book I marked a series of paragraphs that I hope will illustrate my point.
Madame Blavatsky wrote that among the Carbonari – the revolutionary precursors and pioneers of Garibaldi – there was more than one Freemason deeply versed in occult science and Rosicrucianism. Garibaldi himself was a 33rd degree Freemason and Grand Master of Italian Freemasonry.
In Hungary Louis Kossuth, and in South America Simoll Bolivar, Francisco de Miranda, Venustiano Carranza, Benito Juarez and Fidel Castro, all fought for freedom.
Today in the USA there are some 13,000 lodges, and in 2001 it was estimated that there were some seven million Freemason worldwide.
What has the fact that Bolivar and Castro fought for freedom got to do with the Freemasons? Yet by sandwiching this between a reference made by Blavatsky in the late 1800’s and a statistic about the number of lodges in 2001 Black is implying something that he provides no evidence for. And this problem runs throughout the book. Implications made without any supporting evidence at all. Not even any footnotes, just again the implication that the extensive list of “key sources” will provide all the supporting evidence we might require. Black knows well that none of his readers will trawl through his list and I expect he is banking on that.
I must declare an interest. I am a student of the Arcane School whose courses are based on the books of Alice Bailey. Alice Bailey’s books are channelled from The Tibetan and because of this are specifically excluded from consideration by Black in his book. That’s fine and indeed reasonable to a degree but doesn’t seem to prevent Black claiming certain historic individuals were reincarnations of various masters.
On page 515 he sticks in a reference to Lorna Byrne, which I found on Lorna’s website and which led me to The Secret History. Here again we have an idea being presented, something else is just dumped in and then something else is connected to it by implication.
Rilke is using heightened, poetic language, but he seems to be confirming that these deeper laws can only be discerned if we shut out everything else and concentrate on them over a long time with our subtlest and most intense powers of discernment.
IN THE COURSE OF WRITING this book, I have met the young Irish mystic Lorna Byrne. She hasn’t read any of the literature that lies behind this book,… …… Hers is an alternative method of perception, a way of apprehending the parallel dimension that moves things around in our own.
IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, ANCIENT creatures began to stir in the depths of the earth, to slouch towards the appointed place. Imprisoned since the first War in Heaven, the consciousnesseaters were on the move again.
So Rilke, Lorna Byrne and the first War in Heaven are all linked together in some way which the author considers not to require explanation. I’m really not sure what is going on in this book. It is sloppy and may be an edited version of a much larger body of work which has been attacked by an editor who did not have Blacks level of knowledge. Black says that “THIS BOOK HAS ACCUMULATED EVIDENCE to show that throughout history highly intelligent people have immersed themselves in esoteric philosophy.” I’m not convinced. I will accept that these people have had access to inspiration derived from higher planes of experience but to imply that secret societies were passing on techniques from which such inspiration was derived is pushing it.
A far simplier explanation is that bright, intelligent people sought out other bright intelligent people with whom they could have interesting conversations over coffee, over dinner or over a bottle of wine. What we would today call hot-housing. The conclusions they reached may well have being inspired but in order to make use of inspiration you need to have created a fertile ground within which the seeds can grow. Given the nature of the societies within which they lived and the protectionist nature of the church authorities secrecy may well have made sense. Look what happened to Galileo.
Leaving all that aside and making good use of a highlighter there are some useful ideas contained in this book. The central one for me is that we cannot make the assumption that previous generations perceived the reality as we do. I would apply this idea to the recent past. As we pour boiling oil on those whose behaviour is laid bare by the Ryan Report we need to balance our anger with an understanding of the value system that existed in Ireland at the time. The 20th century saw the extermination of 6 million Jews. It saw the massacre at Nanking. It saw the more recent atrocities of the Yugoslav war and the killing fields of Cambodia. To the people who carried out this actions it somehow made sense. We assume individuals are evil at our peril and enable ourselves to ignore the conditions from which such behaviour arises. Behavioural Psychology has much to offer by way of explanation.
Black offers the following:
How to recognize Satan? Or any false prophet? Or any false, purportedly spiritual teaching? False teaching usually has little or no moral dimension, the benefits of reawakening the chakras, for example, being recommended merely in terms of selfish ‘personal growth’. True spiritual teaching puts love of others and love of humanity at its heart – intelligent love, freely given.
Beware, too, of teaching that doesn’t invite questioning, or tolerate ‘ mockery. It is telling you, in effect, that God wants you to be stupid.
Here is a very important message to readers of this book. Here is much food for thought. If your education system does not promote questioning of those in authority, watch out. If your media is getting dumber and dumber, watch out. If everything is based on feeling comfortable and not upsetting people, watch out. If your beliefs cannot support others disbelief, watch out. THERE’S EVIL ABOUT.
