It requires
spiritual practice and realization, not merely a good education
or an open mind. Without actually experiencing the Universal
Truth we cannot truly talk about it. This requires purification
of body and mind, while mere philosophizing, trapped as it is in
the realm of ideas, can be an obstacle to it. As
thought is conditioned by time, space, causation and language,
all formulations of mind must remain partial. No philosophy can
or should be acceptable to everyone, any more than we must all
like the same food.
While a
philosophy of the Eternal should be developed, it must remain
adaptable. It can only
be preliminary, a helpful preparation of the mind. More
important is an inner purification, which alone leads to real
meditation, and this requires that the mind be humbled before
the Infinite it can never grasp. The
idea of a tradition of universal spiritual wisdom is closer to a
real eternal teaching. This idea of a universal can be found in
mystical groups throughout the world which base themselves upon
the pursuit of higher consciousness.
Unfortunately,
such wisdom tends to be defined on an occult level through
psychic powers, magic, miracles and other subtle phenomena
rather than through a deep knowledge of consciousness which is
its real basis. There is a tendency to identify it with an
invisible hierarchy of various ascended masters, which different
groups remake in their own image. Such masters may exist - not
in the form they are portrayed in the popular imagination as
supermen, but as beings who have transcended the ego - but a
universal tradition would not rest upon them. A universal
tradition must rest on Universal Truth and its immutable laws,
not on a particular set of leaders, who could never be the same
for all people.
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