April, 2010
In my page of references I mention the Temple Teachings. I do not wish to draw overdue attention to them more than the other references, which are more fundamental to the Ancient Wisdom and Hylozoics. Only here a few reflections, thinking about common problems with the written teachings. Later on we can critique the names and numbers of our anatomical divisions there as understood and speculated on at the time. Moreover your author has not read nor mastered the entire content. But it would take much patience and separation of fish from bones if I had the pleasure.
Today we have a severe backlash by a large percentage of people not only to the beliefs and practices of religions, especially Christianity, but also of the vocabulary of religions. Thus there is a stigma that arises the moment one uses words like God, Jesus, Christ, crucifixion, salvation, etc.
These very long files, passages from the Teachings of the Temple I, II, III, date from The Temple of the People, established about 112 years ago. I contend that they were advanced for their time and although qualified with cultural baggage by today's standard still contain many advanced, true and helpful ideas.
For 2000 years, in the West, the notions of Christianity were generally accepted, adopted and forced about society and culture. The greatest scientists and philosophers were immersed in this Christian culture and whether of not they were devout, the assumptions and language of Christianity entered into their writing almost without special notice. This mentality was so deeply and universally implanted into he West that it has only slowly receded and, decade by decade, been changed and eliminated from our thinking and vocabulary. We are well into the sea-change state where this religious view is significantly faded from the concern of the majority of people. Except for the remaining strength of those in the churches, these ideas are usually brought up in the context of criticism, accusation or rejection of the church and most religions in general.
This, however does not mean that the significance and power and importance of spiritual truth and spiritual living is weaker or less important today. There is a strong interest in spirituality, but no commonly recognized structure of knowledge that authentically represents this aspect of our existence as a whole.
We must understand our time and the form that spirituality is now taking. Along with the interest in spirituality, it is a time of unbridled chaos in which thousands of related, unrelated and conflicting notions of spirituality are appearing. Most, but not all are vying for attention. We are moving to a synthetic new understand of spirituality. It appears we need to move even further away from old thinking, so we neither love it nor hate it, so we can make use in a new way of the principles and ideas once taught. It appears we will have to abandon old terms and use new ones to illustrate our broad, eclectic and universal synthetic understanding of the enduring truths of an ancient spiritual science becoming modern.
As an example in one life, your author had a powerful spiritual experience in the summer of 1967. Through serendipitous set of a circumstances, this was interpreted in a Christian or Biblical way and ushered in a period of three or four years of intense Bible study, Christian education and ordination. After being immersed in the language of Christian scripture it took several years before the language and assumptions faded, morphing into the use of more accurate and contemporary words, with the assimilation of new and more comprehensible and relevant ideas about spirituality as my studies continued. There was a kind of momentum which took some time to slow and alter direction. a similar think happens in the world as we progress from a highly Sixth Department (devotion and idealism) Christian Age of Pisces to a universal age of Aquarius and the coming together of a new spiritual understanding based on increased knowledge and the evolution of consciousness.
Hilarion, or Francia LaDue, in the Temple Teachings of about 100 years ago demonstrates this cultural setting by many references to Christian ideas which today usually put people off. It takes a love of the truth and genuine curiosity and search of knowledge to overlook some of these and read on to grasp the new esoteric ideas that were being presented. At the time it was a suitable measured advancement. It spoke the religious language of society at the time as everyone was familiar with Christian ideas and whether of not people practiced their religion, people generally respected those that did, not having any other cultural context for religious sentiment at the time.
Therefore when we read the Temple Teachings it is important to emphasize the interesting facts and perspectives as we read on and lay less emphasis on the Christian references and its old language.
Fundamentally the Planetary Hierarchy (of the Great White Lodge, as called in these and other writings) has everything to do with all the great teachers down the ages, including the real or fictional Jesus and the secret teachings which he is repeatedly said to have given his close disciples but not the general public at the time. The many guides and authors of the Ancient Wisdom teachings are colleagues and fellow-travellers with the prophets of the past and as such have an inside knowledge of the truth of their missions, ministries and actual teachings.
The Temple Teachings have a contribution to make to the whole of modern day Hierarchical teachings and my point is that the occasional language should not put us off in a time when we still seem to have an instant reaction to reject Christian terminologies.
It is obvious that the average reader would probably bog down reading the Temple Teachings, for the quality has it's ups and downs with sometimes more, sometimes less dated science references, vagueness, ecclesiastical terms and speculation. The following is a written meditation on a technical use in the teachings.
