THE PATH OF INITIATION

This book should display a warning message on its title page: 'Caution – A magnum opus: compelling reading, but definitely not for skimming through on your Kindle!'

As the subtitle states, the path of initiation in the book deals with the restoration of the Western mystery tradition concomitant with spiritual evolution. The restoration of the Western tradition is especially apt for two main reasons. First, many people equate spirituality and the mysteries just with the East and ignore the fact that the West has its own rich tradition as well. Second and more importantly, as the world-travelled sage and philosopher Paul Brunton pointed out, the Western peoples will never take wholesale to Eastern religions, nor will their intelligentsia take wholesale to Vedanta or Theosophy as philosophies. These forms are too alien and too exotic to affect the general mass. Historically, they have only succeeded in affecting scattered individuals. The West's spiritual revival must and can come only out of its own creative and native mind – and that mind is highly influenced by Western science.

In the approach to the psycho-spiritual world, the mystic is concerned primarily with the intensity of his inner experience and its repetition. Such questions as 'Why?', 'How?', 'For what purpose?', 'In what context?' are of secondary concern to the mystic, but they are of absolutely major concern to the esotericist and occultist who, as Gordon admirably elucidates and elaborates through the course of the book, 'sees and recognizes the "inner world" as a progressive theophany (subjectively visual perception of divine organization) of far greater extent and reality than the objectively visible world' (p. 2).

Accordingly, the book provides very useful and comprehensive accounts of the allegories, sacred metaphors and myths as found in the ancient mystery traditions worldwide: the Egyptians, Assyrian and Chaldeo-Babylonians, Indo-Persians, and Greeks. Also provided are the salient features pertaining to Buddhism, Islam and Manichaeism; and the Jain, Hebrew/Judaic, Pythagorean, Platonic, Sufi, Vedic, Chaldean Oracle, 'Gnostic', Scandinavian, Early Christian, Hermetic, and other sacred traditions. Throughout this panoramic survey it is shown that all the ancient traditions saw and based their philosophies on the central metaphysical concept of a sevenfold system of being and consciousness within the octave of existence, which comprises and is expressed by the soul principle. Additionally, that all were based on the idea of there being but One (Unnameable and Unknowable) Divinity, an aspect of which generated the One Universal Soul, or Oversoul, from which all other souls derived their existence.

Especially useful are the several tables of correspondences, supported by explanatory narrative, between the visible and the unseen worlds pertaining to both nature and man according to the Hermetic Axiom 'As above, so below' and indeed, there are some eloquent, short quotations from the Hermetica. The dynamics of involutionary cycles involving the deva or angelic hierarchies, the elemental and nature spirits, and evolutionary cycles involving the sequence from mineral to plant to animal to human bear careful study. We realize why the highest development of one kingdom of nature provides the medium for the first, rudimentary stage of development of the next higher kingdom.

Interestingly, Gordon dedicates his book to the Rational Soul of the World as does Manly Hall his own book The Secret Teaching of the Ages from which this extract (from Chapter 18) is apposite: 'In the Mysteries it was customary to refer to initiates as phœnixes or men who had been born again, for just as physical birth gives man consciousness in the physical world, so the neophyte, after nine degrees in the womb of the Mysteries, was born into a consciousness of the Spiritual world. This is the mystery of initiation to which Christ referred when he said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John iii. 3)'. However, Gordon makes no mention of Hall, his major esoteric and metaphysical sources being Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey. Moreover, he also disdains any mention of the various sub-branches of modern theosophical thought pursued by such as Besant and Leadbeater and the Anthroposophy of Steiner because he finds little originality in their concepts or lines of thought. This restriction of ideas to essentially classical Theosophy and the Arcane School would seem an unnecessary constraint on a work that otherwise displays immense scope and outreach.

The contents are organized in four parts and five appendices, with Epilogue and supplementary material. Part One 'Consciousness and the Evolutionary Instinct' deals with an understanding of spirit, soul and consciousness in general; human consciousness; the unseen kingdoms of nature; karma and reincarnation; and evolution. Part Two 'Historical Background to the Mysteries and Path of Initiation' concerns sacred metaphor and allegory in the ancient mystery traditions; and then the 'Dark Ages' and the rise of Western esotericism. Part Three 'The Stages of the Initiatory Path' describe spiritual discipleship and probation in a modern age; the initiations of the threshold to higher stages; the great transition; and the various stages of adeptship. Part Four 'The Adept Brotherhood and the Mysteries' elucidates the masters of the modern Theosophical movement; the mystery of Jesus the Christ; the Christ–Maitreya Buddha mystery; and the modern restoration of the mysteries. The appendices throw further light on planetary evolution (rounds and chains); the issue of Shamballa; the evolution of the human racial type; solar systems and the fate of the Moon; and spiritual avatars.

Gordon is especially qualified to deal with the the historical aspects of the subject as he held a recent master's degree in Western Esotericism from the University of Exeter. The occult and esoteric expositions are the fruitage of several decades of study, lecturing and teaching as a senior fellow and one of the most eminent thinkers of the Theosophical Society of England. Given this background, the poetical aphorisms in The Voice of the Silence are used as the explanatory basis for the stages on the path of initiation. The stepwise process of initiation and the sequence from the neophyte aspirant culminating in adeptship are detailed. This includes the characteristics of each stage of initiation and, very helpfully, the severe tests and psychological problems that need to be faced and overcome in order to progress. Indeed, and in one sense, Gordon's book can be seen as an extended commentary and elucidation of Blavatsky's sublime manual for spiritual aspirants undergoing the trials of the initiatory process.

Consciousness is currently a massive conundrum in mainstream science. Vast sums are wasted, and countless hapless rats and monkeys are sacrificed in frenzied research into how (according to materialist neuroscience) the brain generates consciousness. This book makes it quite obvious that consciousness can never, and will never be understood without taking full cognizance of the Ancient Wisdom and the illuminating expositions provide a major step towards such an understanding of a topic on which neuroscience, by its own admission, is barely scratching the surface. Related to this, the limits of Darwinism are logically and succinctly laid bare. It soon becomes obvious that a theory of evolution based exclusively on genetic mutation and natural selection is completely sterile to account for the higher characteristics and spiritual dimension of man. It is also a popular statement or belief in conventional religion that man's spirit is within his body. According to the conclusions of philosophy and theology, however, this belief is erroneous, for, as Gordon explains, spirit first circumscribes an area and then manifests within it. Philosophically speaking, form, being a part of spirit, is within spirit; but: spirit is more than the sum of form. And this is another reason why Darwinism – limited entirely to changes in the physical form – is so incomplete.

My only other reservation is the frequent references to the deficiencies of science to explain the deeper workings of nature. This is absolutely so, and I have no issue with highlighting the shortcomings of science. But the several cursory and condescending remarks are more likely to engender anger and criticism from scientists instead of encouraging them to look deeper into the limits and limitations of science (as would surely be the case, for example, in the diplomatically worded Galileo Commission Report – Beyond a Materialist Worldview – Towards an Expanded Science published by the Scientific and Medical Network, www.galileocommission.org.) The principles underlying esotericism and occult science that comprise the vast bulk of the book are quite magnificent, but it is questionable whether such principles can be used, virtually literally, to explain problems strictly within the boundaries of the physical sciences. These days, science has become a vast industry involving huge machinery, massive expenditure and the unwritten commandment that any scientist who dares to step outside the strictly materialistic paradigm in his research will find his career in ruins. So, I am absolutely all for constructive speculation in science but how far can we speculate. For example, can the phenomena of gravity and levity be explained by the harmonic overlap between the energies emanating jointly from the core of the Earth and the ionosphere surrounding it (p. 130)?

Notwithstanding the above, perusing this book the reader will slowly come to realize that in walking the path of initiation into the mysteries, the law of birth and death is transcended, and, as Manly Hall puts it, during the course of physical existence that part of the spirit which is asleep in form is awakened without the intervention of death – the inevitable Initiator – and is consciously reunited with the overshadowing substance of itself. This is at once the primary purpose and the consummate achievement of the mysteries: that man shall become aware of and consciously be reunited with the divine source of himself without tasting of physical dissolution, as in the Egyptian rites of Osiris, to give but one example, whose death and resurrection figuratively portrayed the spiritual death of man and his regeneration through initiation into the Mysteries.

Gordon graciously acknowledges his gratitude to his academic colleague and friend Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 'whose sudden and unexpected passing from our midst at such an early age (in 2012) has sadly deprived the worldwide community of esoteric studentship of one of its brightest and most prolifically informative lights.' It must also be stated with equal candour that Gordon's own unexpected and untimely passing just one year later has deprived the Theosophical Society in England of undoubtedly the last of its finest, penetrating scholars, and esoteric scholarship worldwide has lost a profound and dedicated student and highly original researcher of the Eternal Wisdom.