Esoteric Knowledge
esôterikos CORBIN ON THE INNER CHURCH FOWDEN ON HERMETIC SECRETS FRANCIS PETERS ON THE OCCULT PARPOLA ON MESOPOTAMIA Novalis 1 We are close to waking, when we dream that we're dreaming." Rilke: “I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy. I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action; and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. 2 P.D. Ouspensky: “Gurdjieff further claimed that knowledge, especially esoteric knowledge, . is finite and cannot be freely distributed to everyone. This higher knowledge, to be 1 HKA II, p. 416 2 Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God effective as a spiritual nutrient, needs to be concentrated and “preserved among a small number of people and not dispersed among the masses.” 3 This view is diametrically opposed by Robert A.F. Thurman: SAMAYA GYA GYA GYAH! “This expression reminds us that this teaching is esoteric, sealed by a vow and protected by angelic beings. The reason it has been traditionally kept a secret is not because of some elitism or stinginess on the part of enlightened teachers. It has been kept secret because it can easily be misunderstood by the uneducated, misunderstood as meaning that there are no efforts to be made towards freedom, that all ethical restraint, virtue, and mental development are really unnecessary, and that anything goes.
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