Recognition of the inner Hierarchy
The Commentaries, in their exoteric version, contain images-inhabitants-interpreters with totally anthropomorphic traits, qualities, characteristics, appearances and customs, identical to that low quality human model* that, on the contrary, should have inspired higher goals. We will see how that imagination, if well understood, contains deep down elements of reality that in ancient times were gradually unveiled to the Adept when he demonstrated he had reached and accepted a more “adult” vision of reality (exterior and interior).
Today, like then, we overcome the need for elementary representations and we constitute a more realistic vision of the universe, where the personal element loses more and more the value of “center of gravity” and in its place arises, as expression of the universe, the conscience of the metaphysical and spiritual element (the constant of this element is motion, therefore cause of the perennial, periodical and cyclical change). After this (inner) revelation, the goal of every thought will be directed to the conquest of freedom and one’s own Free Will.
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*Anthropomorphization of the Model - The “pictorial” language of the Lesser Catechisms has always described the various levels of manifestation (consequence of the changes in energetic intensity of the universe) with the expression Worlds of manifestation. Man has later built its details, coloring them with his fantasy. That’s when the outlines of a physical and a spiritual World took shape in his thought, made to his likeness. From those two, with the characteristics of his imagination, he built the inhabitants of a World of Good and one of Evil with their morals. To stigmatize this habit it has been written: «...(in the profane world) it is not man who is made in the likeness of God, but God was made in the likeness of men».
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The expression to see the Light means to reach a higher level, both logical and inductive, in the trans-personal development. This strengthening and higher Power (to understand) of the mind occurs in the “alliance” that it “imposed” to all its lower counterparts (sub-personalities) experienceduntil then in a regime of “emotional anarchy”. This first alignment between the two psychic beings of the lower (logical) and higher (intuition) mind produces a perceptive expansion on the horizontal Axis (dynamic conceptual vision) and a deeper knowledge on the vertical Axis (intuitive reception). The archaic symbol was coined to describe these two dynamics.
The results of the mental strengthening of man create more realistic teaching elements than the previous ones, which had been covered by “pictorial” languages easier to assimilate.
From a higher initiatory competence, a deep ability for inner learning and the refinement of any concept appeared the habit to use what was called the Greater language of the Adept.
A higher rank Initiate is said to have obtained the full Light or to haveentered the Light. This means to have reached the complete alignment and the full harmonization of all the levels of understanding placed between lower and higher mind. This rejoins the whole Body of the Psyche up to the direct perception of the 2nd pole of the Triad that reflects the 2nd Cosmic Aspect (attractive and magnetic, see the note on the Triad in the article 2.1).
All the mental elements sublimed within a unique ideal and projected towards a unique goal from the will of man compose that strength that is irresistible to the elements of Chaos; it produces in man the initiatory Synthesis or Power of the Soul*, emanation of the 1st pole of the Triad and 1st Cosmic Aspect (dynamic, of Will and Power, see the note of the Triad in the article 2.1).
In this inner synthesis the conscience of man presents itself in unison and fully dominating on all the emotional and psychic levels of one’s own vehicle which, whilst used to appear disjoined in the profane limitation, are now sealed in a unique body that gathers in itself all the elements of the expressive pole (+ pole) as well as those of the receptive pole (- pole) of man. This “alliance” among all the elements of the body of the Psyche, at whose top seats the Triad, is called inner Hierarchy. Esoteric Commentaries say that this is the only one that “…gives the Initiate the Virtue of Wisdom”.
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* Sublimation and projection are two inner techniques that the Initiate consciously uses towards the outside in every necessary occasion, through his mind with actions and words (of power). These two elements, like many others available to the Initiate, are moved by the synthetic element called the “first pole of the Triad”, described in a previous note. This pole pours in the Body of the Psyche what is called Spiritual Will. I must remind you once again that the animic Triad as well reproduces the Will-Love-Intelligent motion aspects of the cosmic trinity by reflecting them from the monadic Triad.
It is worth highlighting the evident analogy of the sense of sacred kept in the meaning of certain synonyms that belong to different languages; between Triad (laic) and Trinity (mystic), these two and the Number 3 (mathematical) and the form of the Triangle and its area (geometrical) which in its three-dimension arrangement (psychic) contains the expression of the Hierarchic Pyramid, both individual (inner Hierarchy) and Universal (the White Hierarchy of the Universal Freemasonry).
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In the way indicated as the Path or initiatory Journey are summed up all the experiences of those who already carried out that evolutionary route, making through the experiences themselves what turns out to be a reasoned line. The gradual selection of the symbols and their meanings allows to cross quickly and economically (process of acceleration = process of Initiation) the part of spiritual unconsciousness that is in fact called from the darkness of Chaos to the Light of Initiation, acquiring the initiatory dignity that expresses the reaching of the inner consciousness of one’s own solar identity, the Monad.
Here originates the assumption that the dignity of Initiation is not in the languages of the method or doctrine, but in the nobility reached by the human heart expressed in the Ceremony of the Initiate himself. This spiritual nobility can be instilled in the heart of every man, giving him the chance of a direct approach with the synthesis of those archetypes (knowledge by contact) which, through a multitude of meanings and symbols, the greater and lesser languages of the Commentaries try and transmit to the reason of the mind, individual and separated.
In the ideal segment that Freemasonry places between Ars Muratoria and Ars Pontificia - reduced to symbols and allegories - we can find all the initiatory and sacerdotal interpretations expressed in the past between East and West and considered worthy to be remembered. This outline is therefore a resolving tract for all the metaphysical and esoteric questions asked by man to himself, whether he is identified in the culture of Mystic or Mysteriosophic Cosmogony.
It is also unquestionably a joining point between initiatory and modern Sciences used to evaluate today the “future scenario” of mass ideologies and identifications where the master mason will work in the 3rd millennium*.
It appears obvious to conclude that the language (of the mind) called lesser first and greater then, concurs, with its characteristics, to form two Catechisms with similar colors, not due to the Tradition (One) but to the relative ability of comprehension of the Adept.
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* Advent of a New Era - Marlin says that the history of men moves through cycles of half millennium and since Christ was at the beginning of one of these periods, called eons, the rotation of the cycles corresponds to halves of millennia in the Christian calendar. Each eon has its own dominant spirit, which is antithetical to the spirit of the cycle that precedes or follows it. When an eon is close to the end, the spiritual and civil requirements on which our existence is based are all unsettled and on the verge of crashing down. Men, then, feel the end of the world close; in actual fact what is getting close is only the end of that cultural, moral, civil and social world where they grew up and which is the only reference for their judgments and evaluations.
Because of the “precession of equinoxes” every 2,020 years circa the Sun is on the 21st March in a different zodiac constellation. Therefore in the two millennia before the present Era the Sun went through the sign of Aries, whilst in the previous ones he went through the Taurus. During the present Era the Sun has gone through the Sign of Pisces; it is now entering the Sign of Aquarius. The symbol of the Aquarius is a man pouring water from a jug. The spiritual quality of Aquarius is brotherhood, cooperation, communion among men…In the prophecies of the new advent of Christ we find clear concordances with the Sign of Aquarius and of the psycho-spiritual characteristics attributed to it. Christ himself significantly used the symbols of that Sign, foreseeing the Work he would have carried out in the Era of Aquarius. He told his disciples that they would meet a man carrying a jug of water and that they had to follow him in a room upstairs and there prepare the Easter supper which He would have joined (Luke, 22.10). Considerator
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The inner and personal work corresponds to the emphasizing of the area of sensation and a natural aggregation of several levels of conscience which, expanding in the two directions, allow to work with a greater and greater ray of mental perception. This ability, lesser and greater than initiatory “knowledge” is symbolized in Freemasonry by the widening of the legs of the Compass of the Free Mason. *
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* Wisdom and Knowledge - From an esoteric comment: “Wisdom is the science of the spirit like knowledge is the science of matter. Knowledge is separating and objective, whilst wisdom is synthetic and subjective. Knowledge divides, wisdom joins; comprehension is the faculty to use knowledge as the base for wisdom, what allows us to adapt the aspect of form to the life of the spirit and to grasp the flashes of intuition”.
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At this point of our journey it is necessary to make a distinction.
By joining the first elements of this Journey it will probably appear that they consolidate a dual concept of the personal Work. Pairs of elements such as high/low, in front/behind, beautiful/ugly, good/evil, useful/useless, hot/cold, long/short, narrow/wide, right/left, even/odd, male/female, white/black, higher/lower, sacred/profane and more are present in all the products of the human logic (dual), but the initiatory resolution consists precisely of re-joining all the edges of the two elements which from opposite in the Profane world become complementary thanks to the Work of “smoothing” of the spiritual Workman.* Going back up to the top of one’s own Hierarchic Pyramid we reach an intellectual composition which is non-dual but One, synthetic and universal.
Only this uniqueness that is believed by the profane thought as a mythical and super-human virtue, even in its essential naturalness, allows the access of human perception to the Sense of Life.
This Sense of Life will turn out to be the Threshold itself of the Great Work.
Even though this foreword might seem obscure, it supplies a first reference to outline the view of a logical thread which, continuing from the dualism of opposite logics that always trouble the profane World, is solved at the end of this work in the synthesis of the initiatory World. **
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* An esoteric comment to the Law of Duality:
«If the Children of God had not “come among the daughters of men” (this is the symbolic way used in the Bible to express the great relation between spirit and matter that was established in the Human Kingdom), if the spiritual entities that make the Humankind had not taken material forms, if the positive spiritual element had not become attached to the negative material aspect, the present conflict would have not taken place. But the divine Plan of evolution was founded on the achievement of this relation between the spiritually conscious man and the form aspect; thus the Great Law of Duality came into action, causing the “fall of the angels” that descended from their free and sinless status of existence with the purpose of developing the full divine consciousness on earth, through the material incarnation and the use of the “mind” criterion.
This was the divine Plan emanating from God’s mind, taken into activity and progressively developed by an Act of His Will.
At the beginning there was the “war in the heavens”, when the Children of God who responded to the divine drive to experiment, serve and sacrifice separated from the Children of God that did not respond to such inspiration, but decided to stay in their high status of original existence.
Christ himself gave testimony of this truth in the parable of the prodigal son and his relationship with the older brother that had not abandoned the home of the father. From this parable we can see where the Father’s approval stands. The thorough study of this tale and the intuitive understanding of its implications will one day supply an answer to the “sin of experience” as it has been called and the understanding of the two main laws that rule the process: the Law of Evolution and the Law of Rebirth».
** Synthesis of the opposites
1) Process. This great criterion, which is the key to understand and solve many theoretical and practical issues, was sensed by Plato. Since the unity exists before the duality, coincidence of the opposites before their separation, the opposites are opposite between them but not towards the unity. The two antithetical terms are solved and overcome in the synthesis. The most effective way to put it into practice is to decisively detach the center of conscience from the two poles and to keep it steady and constant in the higher point of balance and domain.
2) Technique. The difference between the solution of compromise and synthesis is quite clear in a triangular shaped graphic representation. At the top of the base of the triangle there are the two opposite poles; the (intermediate) point of the base can represent a position of compromise. But the two elements are absorbed in a higher unity with qualities that transcend those of both. |
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Assagioli “Equilibramento e sintesi degli opposti” (Balancing and synthesis of the opposites, Note of the Translator).
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