You have heard of the attempt to find the "universal solvent," and the "philosopher's stone," and the "elixir vitae," — these are but playthings in the laboratory of the Mahopanishada! Here will be taught all the laws of matter and spirit reduced to a mathematical and physical quantitative basis. The mysteries from the modus operandi of the Infinite Will and Consciousness to that of sensation and life will be studied as we now study chemistry and botany! Here will be studied the Forces and explained the Laws and taught the verities contained in all the wonders and mysteries of the years gone by! The sacred orgies of Dionysus — the mystic symbols of the Brotherhood — the thaumaturgist's art — the customs of the women of Thessaly and Epirus — the rites of Sabazius — the mental states of the seership of the ancient Pythoness and the modern Hypnot, Clairvoyant and Medium — the Favatma of the Hindoo Yogni and the Sammadhi of the Hindoo worship — the Isvara of the ancient Yogins — the "communion" of Plotinus and Apollonius of Ephesus — the mystery of the Priestesses of Isis, and of the Vestal virgins robed in white — the beauty of the "Holy Form" — the magic of the "mystic wand" — the rythm of the "solar dance" — the mystery of the Sybils, Seers, Signs, and Sigils; of Talismans, Amulets and Charms, and all that progress used to frighten or amuse the infant races of the world. The sacred vault where Menes taught the Knights of Truth, the rythmic tone of Memnon to the sun, the sacred well within the mighty pyramid where old Arabic priests divined the fate of men, the Bo tree's silent shade where fakirs sit and think, the Sal tree's whispering leaves — the silent caves in mountainside hid far from all the haunts of men — the brazen posts within the Temple of the Sun — Aaron's golden bells — the tinklings in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and Augustus — the brazen bowls of the mysteries for calling the kora — the wonders of mesmerism — the seven hundred thousand rolls thought to have been burned in Caesar's time — all these are just as active now, and potent too, as when in medieval days they stirred the social currents of the world. We will understand why the priestesses of northern Germany were led by their hierophants to the roar of tumultuous waters, or why the priestesses of Dodona placed themselves under the oak of the Pelasgian Zeus and listened to the rustling of the leaves, the murmuring of a spring, or the monotonous lullaby of a brook; — why the Rosicrucians and Druids sought the aeolian tones of a wind-swept harp — why the breath of AEolus worked enchantments upon the minds, of the Grecian poets, or why the beautiful blue of the sky inspired the Buddhists of Ceylon to thought, prophecy, and song. Is it all a dream that Epimenides could separate his body from his soul and wander among the star-isles of the milky-way? or that Appollonious could stand before the Dominitian crowd and appear in the grotto of the Hill of Puteoli? Is it all a fancy that the adepts can render themselves invisible, or that the mystic Simon Magus flew off into the air before a multitude of witnesses? Is levitation a physical possibility, and is it a laudable ambition to become the greatest of the Meipo? Are the Pyramids understood, and the thoughts in the cave-temples of Ellora and Elephanta explored? Can the sacred Vach still resound? Is there a real Helicon and was Olympus a fable?

***

It was plainly seen by those who were conversant with the Laws at the period of their discovery, that they contained many facts and many Laws, and a knowledge of many Forces that would prove dangerous to society if they were made known to the world. There are those who contend that all knowledge is too sacred to be kept a secret — that all that can be known by any man should be known by all. If this were true, then all people would be capable of living up to the ethical standard; and the Terra del Fuegian and Australian savage would be capable of utilizing the same knowledge and philosophy suitable to the most advanced people of the white race. If this were true, then the higher trusts capable of being discharged by the best and wisest men among us, would be safe and effective for good in the hands of the lower races. If it were true that all that can be known by the highest minds should be taught to the lowest, then there would be no wisdom in teaching to the people of the Messianic Cycle a different line of knowledge than to those of the Kali-Yug, or to those of the Great Cycle. Suppose for instance that a body of people were in the possession of a secret that would enable them to manufacture foods at no expense; suppose foods were free to all in consequence thereof, what would be the effect upon society? Those having attained that development and that higher consciousness prompting them to be ever busy in attaining a higher culture, would be benefitted and would have more time to devote to the good of the world; and those who had not reached that stage of evolution, would betake themselves to a warmer climate where they needed no clothes, and would cease to be active; they would quit work, enterprise would cease, and retrogradation would ensue. The necessity of maintaining life by means of food compels people and all animals to keep busy — without action life cannot exist — and if foods could be had without effort the majority of the human race would cease to be occupied in the various enterprises and industries through which the necessary experience is obtained to enable them to take a higher step in their upward way. Perhaps no greater mistake could be made than to publish a process for making foods as inexpensive as air and water.

***

[A]nd where shall we go for the desired knowledge? Shall we ask a priest? Shall we consult a book? Shall we ask some professor? Suppose none of these can tell us, what shall we do? If they tell us, how shall we find out whether to rely upon their dictum or not — shall we accept human testimony? Or shall we go to Nature and interrogate her, through the sacred language of experiment, and receive from the Infinite All the answer to our questionings. Reason is the only Oracle that enables us to judge what to do under given conditions AS WE UNDERSTAND THE CONDITIONS. We can only understand the conditions by interrogating Nature. We interrogate Nature when we make an experiment. Nature answers us in the result of the experiment; and Reason correlates and arranges these results and facts, and both the facts and the reasonings are part of Nature. Nature is the evolved being of the all, and Nature depends upon the properties and limitations of Matter and Motion, and therefore, when we read the phenomena of Matter and Force we are learning from the highest of possible sources of truth — there can be no higher and better source.

***

A new and accurate classification of science is needed whereon to base a more extensive system of inductions and deductions than has as yet fallen to the lot of the world. In order that this may be done so as to include all facts and all aspects of each fact, and that the conconcomitant experiments may be performed systematically, without losing the connection they bear to each other and to the general body of science, it will be essential that it shall all be conducted by a central mind capable of taking a comprehensive view of the domain of nature, and at the same time, be able to consider the meaning of each special fact. Now, no one mind can, by any possibility, hold in solution a sufficient number of these many classes of facts to make possible the complete inductive and deductive working of all natural phenomena. To carry on an extensive chain of reasoning extending over the realms of several different sciences, requires that many more facts shall be considered than any one mind can retain. But if the central mind can have each mental faculty supplemented by a specialist in that department of knowledge over which that particular faculty has eminent domain, then these specialists can hold in their memories all the facts in the realm of human knowledge. If each department of science be represented by the greatest living master of that department, and these masters be all placed in one building wherein they can hold direct communion with the head mind, then it will be possible for the central mind to pass in review, by the assistance of these specialists, all of the facts and known phenomena. That central mind will be EKPHORON, and the three or four hundred members will be Hierarchs.

***

 The phenomena of Mind are just as subject to the control of definite forces as are the functions of the liver or of the ganglia. The application of the laws governing the brain will produce a different order of thought than that to which we are accustomed. We are not independent of immutable law in our most evanescent thought. We are not free agents. Our choice is governed by impulses and stimuli beyond our control; all mental tendencies and all mind operations are the result of adequate and efficient causes — they are always the result of an adequate cause — to deny this is to assume that something can take place without a cause, and this would be the introduction of chance into the universe. To admit that the mental operations are the result of a cause, is to admit that we are not free agents. If mind is the result of a cause, then it follows that those operations and conditions which are known as mental and emotional are the effect of a force. The Laws prove that all possible forces are vibratory, and therefore, intellection, in all its forms and stages is the result of vibratory forces, and must be transformed into other vibratory forces in the process of thought.

***

The Hierarchy will possess a power apart from their work in the Temple. Such a body of men selected from the best and the ablest minds in the world, and subjected to a training such as no one has ever had before, will ultimately become a social factor of the highest importance capable of wielding the widest and most beneficent influence over the affairs of humanity. These Pontiffs of Science belong to the world and to no particular country, they cannot be influenced by sectional strife and turmoil nor bribed by party or sectarian feelings. In constant contact with Nature, and in daily use of the reasoning faculties under circumstances best calculated to develop them, they will acquire a wisdom and a prudence in judgement, that will enable them to enter a community unseen and unknown and often turn the torrent of vandalism and riot, in more peaceful and economic directions.

***

Gigantic undertaking! Momentous enterprise!...In comparison with this the Pyramids of Egypt and Yucatan, the Pharos of Alexandria, the Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, the Statue of the Olympian Jupiter, the Mausoleum of Artemisia, the Colossus at Rhodes, the Aqueducts of ancient Rome, the Stone Walls of China, the Cave Temples of Ellora and Elephanta, and the Sacred Temples of Central India dwindle into insignificance.

***

This involves the conception of the directive tendency in Nature. This directive and designing action being the result of the Eternal Organism coextensive and coeternal with Matter and Motion, and being the necessary and inevitable and uncaused result of a condition of things that could not have been otherwise. This is not the teleogical conception of a designer independent of Nature and the universal entity; but the universal entity and the universal motion being uncaused, were eternally organized as a coherent Whole filling all Space; and this Infinite All, exhibiting as the result of motion Infinite consciousness, intellection, love, wisdom and WILL. The eternal uncaused entity filling all Space — the ENS — and the eternal uncaused motion of that entity — the MOVENS — and the eternal uncaused result (Consciousness and WILL) — the OM — were not the result of design or the product of creation or evolution. In accordance with the great principle of the conservation of energy, and in accordance with the properties of matter and motion, and according to the definite laws of Force, this Infinite Will acts eternally in a physical and quantitative manner by actions and reactions within itself, and these actions and reactions are just as susceptible of mathematical formulation as are the laws of light, or of thought and intuition.

***

Optimism is the compulsory belief of the universe. Life must be accepted as an inexorable Fact. Suicide runs counter to the direction of Nature.

***

To those who are in need of a temporary support while mastering the new conception and while discontinuing their belief in the anthropomorphic ideas of God; and to the masses who cannot attain the highest reaches of the logical faculty without a long system of preparatory culture; and to all those who still retain lingering remains of a former fetichism, it may be well to supply their former belief temporarily with the conception that Space is filled with a vast coherent aggregation of matter of a dual nature, consisting of an atomic organism of galaxies floating in an atomolic organism of ether globes, and that it is thus analogous to those living organisms which we know to be conscious and intelligent, and that this Infinite Organism has the power of renewing itself continually. That, as far as we know, intelligence increases with the complexity of the structure, and that this Infinite Whole that fills all space is infinitely complex compared with any living organism, and must therefore be infinitely intelligent. That as a Whole it produces evolution and order and this shows direction — which is in keeping with the assumption of Personal Theism apart from Nature. This Infinite All is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient — the first and the last — the creator of worlds, and all they contain, and in every respect the giver of every good.

***

Department No. 1 and the Esoteric College have in their possession a secret by which they will be enabled to prepare all the animal foods and all possible animal nutrients by a direct process of growth — utilizing air, water and sunshine without degenerating the purity of the substance, by its organization into organs and tissues capable of being diseased; and without being required to kill any living thing. The ethical value of this fact is of prime importance to all those who desire to make the covenant with all created existence. The murdering of animals in order that we may eat them is becoming morally repulsive to all those who are trying to live the higher life, and shocks the finer senses of all those who are trying to develop the intuitions. To those who are trying to make attainments, it is necessary to avoid the killing of any living thing; and to avoid eating the karma of animals. All vegetable products are made by the same general process, without agriculture, and the production of the foods required by the Association will be limited to the use of the Association....and for the protean requirements of the many classes of minds that will be brought together when "the people shall be called up into the Mountain."

***

Angry, malicious, revengeful, and passionate people give off from their bodies a vapor, and certain rays of vibratory force capable of producing chemical effects upon saturated papers placed within the same room. Melancholy people give off a different vibratory force and a different chemical vapor. Unhappy people saturate their rooms with vapors of a different nature than either of the others mentioned. All the mental states produce results of this kind, corresponding to the state; and these vapors and rays given off by people during these conditions are capable of producing similar mental, bodily, and spiritual effects upon other people placed in the same room or in their presence. The experiments of Prof. Jaeger of Jena have been much extended by a knowledge of the new laws, and it is demonstrable that a room in which unhealthy, unhappy or immoral people have lived is forever unfit for the habitation of those who are purer and better, and slowly diseases the body, mind, and morals of those dwelling in it. All these conditions will be eliminated from the precincts of the college. As soon as a person becomes unhappy or diseased or inharmonious they will be taken to a hospital, removed from the neighborhood of the sanctuary and out of the village.

***

Activity is the law of life. The object of reincarnation is the acquisition of experience and knowledge; and do not think the great Schoolmaster will send you to this earth-school and allow you to be promoted before you have learned all the earth has to teach you.

***

The College will be devoted to the training and teaching of the esoteric principles and the matters above mentioned. It will ultimate the organization of a body of people in accordance with Messianic Principles, as governed by the higher light of the present age. In unison with this object, Department No. 1 of the G.....R will contribute knowledges, methods, means, and will seek to gather through this source experimental knowledge relating to sambudhisms, intuitions, desires, prayers and will power, and the principles of devotion and love, in accordance with that of the Messianic Cycle. The object of Department No. 1, is the collection of the sum of knowledge relating to this subject, under head of the Messianic Cycle, for the use of the College Esoteric, and for the use of the Archives of the G.N.K.R.

***

The Society Esoteric has demonstrated that its culture cannot well be carried beyond a certain point under the influences of a mixed society, in a city in the midst of all kinds of miasms, diseases, psychisms, and all adverse influences. "Westward the course of empire takes its way," and westward, upon the mountains, the Esoteric College will find its location, and will embody the highest culture of the Messianic Cycle, under the immediate tuition of teachers raised up for the purpose by Yahveh.

***

The College Esoteric will be devoted to the principles before described, and to the scientific study of the phenomena connected with the faculties commonly called Intuition, Sammadhi, Sambudhism, Inspiration, and development of the conditions necessary for the production of a unison with other minds and with the universal Sensorium.

***

In order to effect the embodiment of the College, the Culture, and the Department, it will be necessary to start the enterprise immediately; and that those who have its organization in charge, shall commence at once the collection of the materials, methods, processes, assistants; and that they visit, according to promise, the occult schools of the Orient, and obtain therefrom the additional instructors, secret knowledges, and the necessary alliance for the proper presentation of the Culture. Practice in the higher mind powers, and methods of soul culture, require definite connections with persons at a distance, working in harmony with us. There are those in the Orient who have awaited for long centuries, the opportunity for occidental alliances and connections; and VIDYA-NYAIKA has the promise from those who always fulfill, that the Messianic Department shall have the assistance of those who have valuable occult knowledge to communicate, to those who are ready to receive, and prepared to practice.

***

P. S. — Neither Prof. Butler nor The Society Esoteric are responsible for the philosophical opinions and statements expressed by VIDYA-NYAIKA in the foregoing pages; neither are the G.N.K.R and the G.....R or VIDYA-NYAIKA, responsible for the philosophical or religious opinions expressed in the pages following these, by Prof. Butler, the Founder of The Society Esoteric in Boston, and the Originator of the Esoteric College, who has been appointed ADHY-APAKA of Department No. 1 of the G.....R. This Dep. No. 1, The Society Esoteric and the College are one in purpose, belief, method, and philosophy, and are working for the immediate building of the College, in accordance with the statements of the special message from the "interior of the innermost," and the following pages. The Society Esoteric is not responsible for the dictum of the G.....R or vice versa.

***

Some of our Christian friends may say that this is a Buddhistic movement; but if you will take the trouble to examine it, you will find it far more a Christian work, than that of all the Christian churches together, and that its teachings are those of your own Bible, in its true meanings.  We are prepared to demonstrate that the Bible is a grand store of scientific knowledge, and that we believe its teachings more fully than any Christian minister in our land, because we have received instructions in its real teachings, as well as in those of the other systems of religion, and we are prepared to say, that God is the Author of all true religious thought, and wherever there is an honest, devout soul, there God's Angels are sent with a knowledge of the truth — no matter whether it is Christian by name, Mohammedan, Brahman, Buddhist, or a native Indian.

***

"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." John, VIII, 32.

***

[T]o know the Laws and the Methods of the Creative Mind is truth, it is scientific knowledge.

**

God is Spirit, the all present, unchangeable essence and source of all things. "The Everlasting Father" is the free Spirit: God "the Everlasting Mother" gathers and forms that Divine Essence into a body, and the unchangeable Spirit is the life thereof; its consciousness is not individual, but universal; therefore, as a primate, man is not. The form being only a thought-form of Deity, man through experience obtains knowledge of his limited sphere of service; this individualizes him and forms out of the original elements a soul made up of knowledges gained by experience. Thus the man is the experience, and the experience is the man. The life is the God that animates and serves the man; the knowledge is derived by experiences from God; for all things are of God, and all law is only the methods of the Infinite.

***

The masters and mystics of every age and nationality have united with the biblical idea that all men are members of one body and that each is a part of a whole. This fact is scientifically demonstrated by Solar Biology, where it is made evident to any reasonable mind that the true order is for man to come into a conscious realization of that oneness.

***

We know that there are two distinct classes in the world, the Religious and the Scientific. The religious predominates; but religion without science is blind and ignorant, science without religion is cold and heartless. Religion is the feminine mind, science is the masculine — they must marry, and the wife must be a helpmeet to the husband, and the husband the head, in the intellectual sphere, then, they together, will dwell in an eden superior to anything that has preceded it.

***

We are led to observe some of the reasons why mankind have not as yet reached the unit of true progress. And one especially is, that man has endeavored to travel alone, isolated, distinct, and separate from his sister woman. This as a rule is the way the ancient sages have endeavored to make attainments, not being able to grasp the idea of unity through God's presence in this dual relation; but Jesus, the great Master, came with higher light and deeper perception regarding the sphere of woman, teaching that in the beginning they were not two but one, and thus in a fuller degree was inaugurated a religious system which placed man and woman side by side at the altar of spiritual communion; and thus in the new cycle of progress, in the new temple of humanity, woman must have her true and coequal place with man, as the two in spiritual oneness become the true and essential unit of higher evolution."

***

[W]hile the law of procreation is dominant it allows the body barely enough vitality to run the machinery, and when its own force is exhausted it dies out and carries down the body with it. Therefore if we would have higher life, or even a proper measure of physical life, we must take control of this function, and not allow it to use us, exhaust itself, and carry the body down to death....[A]sk the physiologist if celibate animals do not reabsorb this vital principle, and physically profit thereby? Was not that the method of all the great masters of antiquity? Was this not the secret of their greatness? Certainly it was. It has been demonstrated in all ages by the few who became masters over themselves and the forces of nature. We see this in the example and masterly powers of Jesus, he also being a celibate; so we see that it was not only possible, but necessary, before great attainments could be made.

***

The spirit of God is a consuming fire and burns on the altar of reproduction.

***

But the life principle that I began to speak of a few moments ago, is only obtainable when all these barriers, thrown up by the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of one's nature, are broken down by the only way that has ever existed or will exist to free ourselves from them, namely, by a Covenant with God. We have heard old people, when we were children, talking about witches selling themselves to the devil. I know I used to hear old people talking about these things when I was a boy. There is truth in this thought. A person has to virtually sell himself, soul, body and spirit, to whatever sphere of life he desires to become eminent in. While men and women stand in their own ego, and through their own will-power manifest their selfhood, they will find that they are in a constant struggle, a struggle that it is impossible for any man or any woman that ever lived or will live, probably, to maintain themselves in, and remain consistent with their own highest reason.

***

"The ultimate to which we are calling your attention, towards which we are laboring, is to bring about a new world where the people will be prepared to live under the controlling influences of the infinite Mind....they will be as it were 'psychologized' by the infinite Mind. That is, their whole thought, their whole desire, and all that they are or hope to be, will be so linked to the Will of the universe that their wills and the will of God will be absolutely one."

***

Those having been faithfully complied with and the point gained where all waste of the vital fluids is stopped, we are ready to seek methods to escape the IMPRISONMENT IN THE NARROW CONFINES OF THE PHYSICAL BODY.

***

"This again necessitates another belief, viz. that there are ages of development through which time all souls — or all but those who through occult knowledge make the superior attainments — must reincarnate, until the end of the age, when the planets will come into positions that will produce mental conditions that will turn the minds of the most mature toward the Divine laws and methods of attainment, and will give them a desire to reach the high goal. And all those who do, will be gathered together in one place where they will form one body in perfect harmony and unity of thought, feeling, and action; and through the spiritual powers and knowledge possessed by them they will never die, but when their body is sufficiently refined they can transmute it to soul-force and leave the earth at will."

***

"Life is as though we were placed in a long corridor, impregnable walls on either side (composed by the limits of our capacity), forcing circumstances behind us — which are the needs and conditions of life. The inevitable destiny for which we were made lies at the far end of the corridor; circumstances, like an army of spears, force us on slowly, but with ever-present persistency. Now we can choose in this state whether we will move forward only as we are forced by the point of the spear, rush blindly against the walls and injure ourselves, or place our eye on the inevitable end, and make all haste in reaching it."

***

O God, into thy hands have we committed all we are, all we have or will ever be entrusted with, to be used for thy beloved children, asking naught for self; and if we are permitted to see thy people enjoying the good Thou hast prepared for them, we shall be satisfied. Now into Thy hands we commit the result of this our effort. Do Thou dispose the people according to Thy wisdom, for the work is Thine, the people are thine, and we Thy servants to be commanded, and we will obey. Amen.