Master Teacher of the Neoplatonists
But Saint Germain was not always to be counted in the
ranks of the Church. He fought tyranny wherever he found it, including in false Christian
doctrine. As the Master Teacher behind the Neoplatonists, Saint Germain was the inner
inspiration of the Greek philosopher Proclus (c. A. D. 410-485).
He revealed his pupil's previous life as a Pythagorean philosopher, also showing Proclus
the sham of Constantine's Christianity and the worth of the path of individualism (leading
to the individualization of the God flame) which Christians called "paganism."
As the highly honored head of Plato's Academy at Athens, Proclus based
his philosophy upon the principle that there is only one true reality--the
"One," which is God, or the Godhead, the final goal of all life's efforts. The
philosopher said, "Beyond all bodies is the essence of soul, and beyond all souls the
intellectual nature, and beyond all intellectual existences the One." Throughout his
incarnations Saint Germain demonstrated tremendous breadth of knowledge in the Mind of
God; not surprising was the range of his pupil's awareness. His writings extended to
almost every department of learning.
Proclus acknowledged that his enlightenment and philosophy came from
above--indeed he believed himself to be one through whom divine revelation reached
mankind. "He did not appear to be without divine inspiration, his disciple Marinus
wrote, "for he produced from his wise mouth words similar to the most thick-falling
snow; so that his eyes emitted a bright radiance, and the rest of his countenance
participated of divine illumination."
Thus Saint Germain, white-robed, jeweled slippers and belt emitting star-fire
from far-off worlds, was the mystery Master smiling just beyond the veil--mirroring the
imagings of his mind in the soul of the last of the great Neoplatonic philosophers.
Merlin
Saint Germain was Merlin, the unforgettable, somehow
irretrievable figure who haunts the mists of England, about to step
forth at any moment to offer us a goblet of sparkling elixir. He the
'old man' who knows the secrets of youth and alchemy, who charted the
stars at Stonehenge, and moved a stone or two, so they say, by his magical
powers--who would astonish no one if he suddenly appeared on a Broadway
stage or in the forests of the Yellowstone or at one's side on any highway
anywhere. For Saint Germain is Merlin.
Merlin, dear Merlin, has never left us--his spirit charms the ages,
makes us feel as rare and unique as his diamond and amethyst adornments. Merlin is the
irreplaceable Presence, a humming vortex about whose science and legends and fatal romance
Western civilization has entwined itself.
It was the fifth century. Midst the chaos left by the slow death of the
Roman Empire, a king arose to unite a land splintered by warring chieftains and riven by
Saxon invaders. At his side was the old man himself--half Druid priest, half Christian
saint-seer, magician, counselor, friend, who led the king through twelve battles to unite
a kingdom and establish a window of peace.
At some point, the spirit of Merlin went through a catharsis. The scene
was one of fierce battle, the legend says. As he witnessed the carnage, a madness came
upon him--of seeing all at once past/present and future--so peculiar to the lineage of the
prophets. He fled to the forest to live as a wild man, and one day as he sat under a tree,
he began to utter prophecies concerning the future of Wales.
"I was taken out of my true self," he said. "I was as a
spirit and knew the history of people long past and could foretell the future. I knew then
the secrets of nature, bird flight, star wanderings and the way fish glide." Both his
prophetic utterances and his "magical" powers served one end: the making of a
united kingdom of the tribes of the old Britons. His pervasiveness is recalled in an early
Celtic name for Britain, "Clas Myrddin," which means "Merlin's
Enclosure."
By advising and assisting Arthur in establishing his kingship, Merlin
sought to make of Britain a fortress against ignorance and superstition where Christ
achievement could flower and devotion to the One could prosper in the quest for the Holy
Grail. His efforts on British soil were to bear fruit in the nineteenth century as the
British Isles became the place where individual initiative and industry could thrive as
never before in twelve thousand years.
But even as Camelot, the rose of England, budded
and bloomed, night shade was twining about its roots. Witchcraft, intrigue
and treachery destroyed Camelot, not the love of Launcelot and Guinevere
as Tom Malory's misogynistic depiction suggests. Alas, the myth he sowed
has obscured the real culprits these long centuries.
'Twas the king's bastard son Modred by his half sister
Margawse who with Morgana le Fay and a circle of like sorceresses and
black knights, set out to steal the crown, imprison the queen, and destroy
for a time the bonds of a Love that such as these (of the left-handed
path) had never known nor could --a Reality all of their willing, warring
and enchantments could not touch.
Thus it was with a heavy heart and the spirit of a prophet who has seen
visions of tragedy and desolation, fleeting joys and the piercing anguish of karmic
retribution endlessly outplayed, that Merlin entered the scene of his own denouement, to
be tied up in spells of his own telling by silly, cunning Vivien--and sleep. Aye, to err
is human but to pine for the twin flame that is not there is the lot of many an errant
knight or king or lonely prophet who perhaps should have disappeared into the mists rather
than suffer sad ignominy for his people.
Roger Bacon
Some say he still sleeps but they grossly underestimate the resilient
spirit of the wise man rebounded, this time in thirteenth-century England disguised as
Roger Bacon (c. 1214-1294). Reenter Merlin--scientist, philosopher, monk, alchemist and
prophet--to forward his mission of laying the scientific moorings for the age of Aquarius
his soul should one day sponsor.
The atonement of this lifetime was to be the voice crying in the
intellectual and scientific wilderness that was medieval Britain. In an era in which
either theology or logic or both dictated the parameters of science, he promoted the
experimental method, declared his belief that the world was round, and castigated the
scholars and scientists of his day for their narrow-mindedness. Thus he is viewed as the
forerunner of modern science.
But he was also a prophet of modern technology. Although it is unlikely
he did experiments to determine the feasibility of the following inventions, he predicted
the hot-air balloon, a flying machine, spectacles, the telescope, microscope, elevator,
and mechanically propelled ships and carriages, and wrote of them as if he had actually
seen them! Bacon was also the first Westerner to write down the exact directions for
making gunpowder, but kept the formula a secret lest it be used to harm anyone. No wonder
people thought he was a magician!
However, just as Saint Germain tells us today in his Studies in
Alchemy that "miracles" are wrought by the precise application of universal
laws, so Roger Bacon meant his prophecies to demonstrate that flying machines and magical
apparatus were products of the employment of natural law which men would figure out in
time.
From whence did Bacon believe he derived his amazing awareness!
"True knowledge stems not from the authority of others, nor from a blind allegiance
to antiquated dogmas," he said. Two of his biographers write that he believed
knowledge "is a highly personal experience--a light that is communicated only to the
innermost privacy of the individual through the impartial channels of all knowledge and of
all thought."
And so Bacon, who had been a lecturer at Oxford and the University of
Paris, determined to separate himself and his thoughts from the posing and postulating
residents of academe. He would seek and find his science in his religion. Entering the
Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, he said, "I will conduct my experiments on the
magnetic forces of the lodestone at the selfsame shrine where my fellow-scientist, St.
Francis, performed his experiments on the magnetic forces of love."
But the friar's scientific and philosophical world view, his bold attacks on the
theologians of his day, and his study of alchemy, astrology and magic led to charges of
"heresies and novelties," for which he was imprisoned in 1278 by his fellow
Franciscans! They kept him in solitary confinement for fourteen years, releasing him only
shortly before his death. Although the clock of this life was run out, his body broken, he
knew that his efforts would not be without impact on the future.
The following prophecy which he gave his students shows the grand and
revolutionary ideals of the indomitable spirit of this living flame of freedom--the
immortal spokesman for our scientific, religious and political liberties:
I believe that humanity shall accept as an axiom for its conduct the
principle for which I have laid down my life--the right to investigate. It is the credo of
free men--this opportunity to try, this privilege to err, this courage to experiment anew.
We scientists of the human spirit shall experiment, experiment, ever experiment. Through
centuries of trial and error, through agonies of research... let us experiment with laws
and customs, with money systems and governments, until we chart the one true course-until
we find the majesty of our proper orbit as the planets above have found theirs.... And
then at last we shall move all together in the harmony of our spheres under the great
impulse of a single creation--one unity, one system, one design.
|
