Education to see

I don’t believe into supremacy of the knowledge belonging to the old times. I recognize that some of ‘Them’ were able to point out paths whose accesses (mind and conscience) would be difficult to find today, because of the pile of ideologies covering them. The sequence of development of knowledge advanced with time, developing the original ideas, enriching them with new details and multiplying their relations. In actual fact they were made bigger and deeper. Generally speaking, though, we can’t deny the extraordinary ability of the human being to get ‘mixed up’ in his own words.
Today like yesterday it is difficult to find people who are able to answer ‘I don’t know’ on the intellectual, initiatory and esoteric steep slopes. It is more likely that answers are made up, supporting imaginary culture (according to Jung this is onanistic culture) that thrives so much in ‘popular’ metaphysics. Perhaps this happens because the people who read are able to start from exact questions and often competence is missing, where we can distinguish the right answer from a bungled up response. This credulousness is accompanied by the inability of a consistent criticism; they aid imagination which, personally, I consider as a fraudulent cheat.



Many scholars appeal to the symbolism of art (see symbolic and pictorial language) to find unusual teachings. The sculpture pictured here is called ‘Disillusion’ and it shows how only the soul (through the intellect) can free us from the net of deceits, the mesh of words, the small ideas of ‘spirit-blinded people’ who want to give at any cost an ‘interpretation’ of what they can’t see. This is the absurdity of the wish to ‘bring the heaven on earth’. Mistrust towards the current culture is therefore the imperative of the researcher who must replace the search for words with the search for himself. He must search inside, not outside himself, for his answers. This is the purpose of mental development. The development of mind and conscience is a priority; only through its accomplishment we can draw the ‘ability of judgment’ that tells us real from unreal, truth from deceit. The univocal opinion of a group of extraordinary thinkers supports this ‘path’.
“The eye that observes from the outside doesn’t count; it is the inner eye that matters!”

C. G. Jung: …a correct use of the mind presumes that man can master his cerebral mechanisms.

Albert Einstein: …the liberation of atomic energy has changed everything, so much that our usual way of thinking has become obsolete. In order to survive, the humankind will have to adopt a substantially new way of thinking; through a painful experience we have learnt that the rational thought is not enough to solve the problems of social life. Cosmic religiosity doesn’t know dogmas or Gods conceived in the likeness of man. Therefore there isn’t any Church as yet that funds its teachings on cosmic religiosity…

…the purpose of school should always be this: when youngsters leave it they must have acquired a harmonious personality, not a specialization. The development of a general attitude to free thinking and free judgment should be paramount, not the acquisition of a special knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo: …our ideal is a spirituality that doesn’t retire from life, but conquers it with the power of the Spirit. The West has turned intellectual, emotional, vital and material development into its ideal; it has overlooked, though, the possibilities of its spiritual existence. It has ideals of progress, freedom, equality and brotherhood, reason and science and any kind of efficiency for better politics and social and economic organization, unification and earthly happiness for the race. The East has the secret for this transformation, but it has not looked at the earth for too long. The time has come to heal this separation and to join Life and Spirit.

Every scripture is a pure means. It is useless to those who don’t know yet the generating power of knowledge; likewise to those who have already learnt it. The people who practice the non-knowledge wander in the darkness; those who are happy with what they have learnt through studying wander in an even bleaker darkness. When you achieve true knowledge, throw away the books, as if they were on fire.

Konrad Lorenz: …he lists the eight capital sins of society and then he carries on…
…the systems of the new thinking are substantially addressed to the stimulation of the right side of the brain, which the male-orientated culture in general and the illuminist one in particular have overlooked, choosing to develop the functions of the left hemisphere, namely logical and organizational skills.
We can compare the human brain to the globe, which is also divided in two hemispheres, the western (left) and the eastern (right). Furthermore we can compare the earthly East and West to the feminine and masculine worlds.

The societies that live in the two hemispheres have produced two different cultures, mentioned by Aurobindo; so far they have only met sporadically and in the person of few illuminates. Nowadays, with the arrival of the 3rd Millennium, we have the bases for this to happen, starting from ourselves as rough stone which needs to be smoothened through esoteric word; it will cause the two hemispheres of our brain, of which we are the bearers, to meet. Indeed, Jung mentions a correct use of the mind.

Brunelli: with regards to the power of the mind, it is obvious that Masons and Freemasonry must, with the consciousness of the symbolism of their instruments, use the mind as a creative instrument, not only to rationalize, speculate, etc. The first principles of what happens on earth originate in the world of mind; tomorrow’s world is born every hour, today, here, in the mind of men who can use the instrument of power: creative thinking.

Guenon: with regards to psychic powers, we need to say that there are occult powers of a different kind, which exert their action in well defined fields, through means suitable to their goals… it is undeniable that the attitude of individuals and community can be changed by a systemized whole of suitable suggestions…. A determined mood requires favorable conditions in order to be established. We need to know and use this conditions if they exist; if they don’t we must achieve their realization.

For the person who ‘searches’ it is necessary to understand what to search for and then how to do it. Every search starts from heart and mind and it goes back there. Therefore I think that first of all we must learn to open these two ‘windows’ wide. Otherwise we risk becoming useless collectors of words.

By Athos A. Altomonte