Imagination Creates Reality...One Cause

Imagination Creates Reality...One Cause

Creation is finished and it is good! God created the earth and all that is in it and God said it was good. Man has puzzled over these statements for centuries. If man really understood the meanings, he would not be confused nor would he feel anxious about his past, present or future. The understanding of these two statements would enable man to realize that he, alone, controls his actions and the circumstances of his life.

Let us take the first statement. God created the earth and all that is in it. God is infinite; therefore, God must have been before any form came into being. What substance could He have used to create all that exists?

There can be only one answer. God created everything that exists from the only substance available – Himself. God (thought/consciousness) spoke the Word and brought everything into being out of himself. Everything you perceive is made of the one substance – God. The one substance back of everything is energy and that energy is God or the “Word.”
Although scientists and medical men can analyze the various chemicals of which the body is made, none can combine these chemicals to form a living person. Since God created all that is out of Himself, it follows that God is the creator and the creation. God is expressing life through each and every one of us. It could not be otherwise.
Let us take the second statement. God said that His creation was good. That statement has confused man who believes that if God is good, another power must have created that which is not good. Yet, man also acknowledges that God is infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. These qualities of God must include all forms, all events, and all situations. If it were possible to remove all that is discordant or inharmonious from the world, it would not be possible to experience the reverse of that condition.

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Word is thought or imagination. God imagined the world into being and became that which He conceived. This is the principle on which all creation rests. Since God became man to give man life, man must contain that same creative principle within himself. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” We have created our personal world through thought. If you are experiencing lack, limitation, illness, disharmony or any other unwanted condition; you have either consciously or unconsciously brought these conditions into your experience. The majority of people do not realize that thought, belief, and imagination has created their individual worlds. There is no other cause for the conditions of your life. You may choose to disbelieve this, but whether you believe it or not, all that you behold in the outer world was conceived within your own consciousness prior to your experience of it.

Neville Goddard

The Hermetica...Rebirth

The Hermetica...Rebirth

The inexorable working of destiny, imposed on man by the turning of the Zodiac, subjects all human beings to the pain of birth and death. Man's problem is that in his ignorance he believes himself to be just a body, one that will grow old, suffer and eventually die. His sense of injustice at the inevitability of his fate leads him to hurt himself and others, either through lust for more life or fear of approaching death. These crimes serve further to bind the soul to the body and so increase man's suffering. Purifying ourselves of ignorance is therefore the first step on the ladder that leads to rebirth. Rebirth is the knowledge of our own immortality.

To escape the suffering inherent in our human predicament, we must be reborn in spirit. The spiritual path that we must walk is the same one trodden by our ancestors. It is a hard road to follow whilst incarnate in a physical body, because we must struggle to master ourselves. Right understanding purifies us of all the vices that torment us and awakens our immortal soul.

One who is thus reborn communes with God. But this only happens when we stop talking about it and allow it to occur naturally in the silence and tranquility of deep contemplation. An enlightened being no longer believes he is a body. The body belongs to Nature, not to him, and so its fate is of no importance. He is One with everything. He sees Goodness everywhere. He is bathed in divine Light. H|e has become All-Mind.

Rebirth is not a theory that we can learn. It is a natural occurrence that happens when God wills it. All that we may do is prepare for this enlightenment by mastering our passions and accepting whatever fate may bring us. For a man with vision, all things are good, even if other people see them as evil. His knowledge of God gives him the ability to see Goodness at work even when he is mistreated by others. Those who are reborn are already living in the kingdom of heaven.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica...Ignorance of the Soul

The Hermetica...Ignorance of the Soul

The limitations imposed on the soul by the physical body mean that human life rests on how we live our present lives. Earthly existence is an opportunity to train the soul so that, at death, it does not lose its way but travels straight to heaven.

Everything material, even our own body, is foreign to our essential spiritual nature. Unfortunately, we become so caught up with the transitory sensual pleasures of life that we are unaware of our eternal soul. The body should be the slave of the soul, not its master.

Hermes assures us that there is a way to free ourselves from the torments of life. These he tells us are simply caused by our own ignorance. |He exhorts us to free ourselves from our enslavement, develop our inner vision, and use the power of our mind to experience the Mind of God. 'Why give yourselves to death when you could be immortal?' he asks.

Hermes assures us that the haven of peace awaits those who rise to his challenge. Man is made in the image of God and can therefore rise to become one with God. Only like can know like. It is our fear that separates us from the truth., our lack of belief in ourselves that binds us to the Earth. Man has the power to ascend into heaven and yet crawls on his belly through the dust. In Hermes' eyes Mankind's greatest error is that he has the power to know God and yet does not use it.

Simply wishing to know God is enough to set us on the road to enlightenment. The spiritual path is not difficult, for as we awaken from our ignorance, God comes to us. At times and places where we least expect it, suddenly we are aware that God is with us. The end of the spiritual journey is the realization that he is everywhere and everything.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…Death and Immortality

The Hermetica…Death and Immortality

From mankind’s perspective, time is a destroyer. Through the process of time we age and die. From a cosmic perspective, time is an endlessly repeating cycle, measured by the constant revolution of the stars. Whilst the things of the Earth are always changing, the orbits of the stars always remain the same. Hermes asks, could something as impermanent and transitory as our earthly existence be regarded as anything other than an illusion? Yet this illusion arises from an underlying permanent reality. The discovery of the permanent within the impermanent is the reward of the spiritual quest. 

Hermes teaches that we must accept the inevitable transitory nature of all physical things. Everything is in a process of being born and then dying. The old must pass away so that the new can come into existence. New shoots are born from the decaying remains of old vegetation. And these new shoots will in turn eventually decay and die. He teaches, however, that a human birth is not the beginning of the soul, only of its incarnation as that particular person. Death is simply the end of this particular person and the soul’s transformation into another state. Death is just the discarding of a worn-out body. Most people are ignorant of this fact, and therefore needlessly fear death. 

After leaving the body at death, the individual soul is judged by the chief of the gods, to see if it is pure and honorable. Pure souls are assigned to a heavenly realm. Ignorant souls fall once again into the material realms and are reincarnated. A soul which during its earthly life has come to know God, will have become all Mind. When it leaves the body it takes on a body of Light and is freed from all limitations. Such an enlightened soul has recognized that its essential nature is god-like, and on death it communes with God. It has 'run the race of purity' and is now completely spiritual and devine. such a soul has become a 'god'. 

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…Incarnation of the Soul

The Hermetica…Incarnation of the Soul

All souls share the same essential nature. They are neither male nor female, as such differentiating characteristics exist only in the body. All souls are a part of the one Soul of the Cosmos.

God has two servants which look after souls. The Keeper of Souls cares for disembodied souls, and the Conductor of Souls sends them down into physical incarnation. Nature creates the individual body into which a soul incarnates. The power that Hermes calls “Memory’ ensures that this body conforms to the universal ‘form’ of the human species. The power Hermes calls ‘Skill’ makes sure that each individual body is a fitting home for the particular soul it houses. 

Our individual characteristics are governed by the qualities of the gods presiding over the moment of our incarnation. If the gods present at our birth are peaceful, we will be peaceful by nature. If they are warlike, we will be aggressive. This is why astrologers say, for example, that those born at the time of Aries have certain characteristics whilst those born at the time of Capricorn have a different nature. Those gods who accompany the soul at the moment of birth affect the instinctual nature of the soul. Those that have their effect later in adolescence affect the rational part of the soul.

Before it incarnates, the soul is already wrapped in a spiritual body. When this wrapping is thin and clear, the soul is intelligent. However, when this wrapping is dense and opaque, the soul has limited vision and is only aware of its immediate situation. As a soul sinks into incarnation it forgets its own nature and takes on the qualities of the gods who have shut it into a human body. Hermes describes a vision of disembodied souls about to make their journey into a physical form. They are filled with fear and horror at the fate which awaits them. They cannot bear the prospect of such imprisonment. 

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…the Universal and the Particular

The Hermetica…the Universal and the Particular

Everything has a ‘form’. A table, for example, is a horizontal surface supported by legs. This is the ‘universal form’ which all tables share. Every individual table shares the universal form of all tables, but it also has a unique particular form by which we know it to be this table and not that one. One table is large and made of oak. Another table is small and made of plastic. Both are unique and yet both are still tables. If anything deviates too far from this universal form we would no longer call it a table. If a table were to be smashed into pieces, for example, it would have changed form and we would now call it something else, ‘firewood’ perhaps.

Everything is a particular version of a universal form. Every animal for example, both unique and a member of a particular species. All human beings share the quality of being human, but each individual has unique characteristics by which we may tell them apart from other members of our species. Each one of us is a particular version of the universal form "human being'.

This quality of humaness is unchanging and permanent. We are very different from our ancestors, but we are are no more 'human'. The particular forms are always changing. in a single human life we change from being a baby to become an adult and finally an elder. We never remain the same, yet birth, mortality and death are all contained within the universal form of a human life.

Hermes compares the constant universal forms to the fixed constellations of the stars. He compares the changing particular forms to the changing relationships between the stars as revolve in the heavens.

Our fundamental human nature remains the same throughout our life, but our individual fate changes in accordance with the constantly changing pattern of the stars. As in astrology, Hermes teaches that our individual destiny is created by the positions of the planets at our moment of birth. These are the 'gods' who take charge of us, controlling our bodies and shaping our souls,

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…The Zodiac and Destiny

The Hermetica…The Zodiac and Destiny

God created humans to appreciate the awesome wonder of his universe; to be themselves a beautiful embellishment of the Cosmos; and to share in God’s creative powers and participate in the work of creation.

The heavenly gods, the planets, who had already bestowed on man some of their own power, now urged the Creator to be cautious. They fear that man will use his inquisitive mind for destructive as well as constructive purposes. Man’s powers, they complain, are too great and unlimited, and therefore dangerous to himself and the order of the Cosmos.

God responds to their concerns by creating the Zodiac. This celestial mechanism will control the fate of men and be ruled over by the goddess Destiny. She sows the seeds of a person’s fate, which grow and develop under the constraints of Necessity, the limits and demands of physical nature, to shape every human life.

It is man’s lot to live the life prescribed for him by his fate. Very few human beings are capable of escaping from the determining influence of the Zodiac. Man’s earthly life is controlled by the power of Destiny, through the physical limitations of the mortal human body. However, if a man’s mind is illuminated by the light of God, he becomes free from these celestial influences – for even the gods are powerless before God. Hermes teaches that it is our duty not simply to acquiesce in our fate, but rather, through intense contemplation of God, to rise above our merely mortal nature and awaken our immortal soul.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…Man is a Marvel

The Hermetica…Man is a Marvel

God, the Cosmos and man are three great beings. The Cosmos is an image of God, and man is an image of the Cosmos. Each is made up of many parts, yet each is greater than the sum of there parts. Man was created to be a vehicle through which God could continue to bring order and beauty to the Cosmos. All beings have soul – the Life-force – within them. But only human beings possess the power of Mind, with which we can contemplate the Cosmos and come to know God.

Human beings are the meeting place of spirit and matter. We have, therefore, a dual nature. We are Mind enclosed by a physical body. The human mind is an image of God’s Mind – it is immortal, eternal, divine and free. The human body on the other hand, is mortal and controlled by the laws of Destiny which are governed by the stars.

Hermes dares to suggest that this unique dual nature even places human beings above the gods. The gods – the heavenly bodies – are confined within their permanent orbits in the heavens, and will never move beyond them. A human being, however, may both be on the Earth and, through the power of his mind, ascend to the heavens. In the twentieth century we have used this power to journey literally to the stars and reach back through telescopes to see the origin of the universe.

Being both spirit and matter, man is an intermediary between these two great principles. He is greater than beings who are merely mortal, and above those who are purely immortal. He shares in the creative power of God. He even, with his mind, creates gods in his own human image.

Hermes concludes that man is a marvel, worthy of wonder and reverence – a sentiment that fueled the humanism of the Renaissance. The purpose of human life is to rise above our merely human nature and awaken our divine nature. Human beings have the unique potential to know God, and God’s greater wish is that we fulfill this potential.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…The Creation of Humankind

The Hermetica…The  Creation of Humankind

God created humankind because he wanted there to be a creature capable of appreciating the great beauty of his Cosmos. He asks each of the gods who administer the Cosmos to provide something to benefit humanity. The sun gives joy. The moon gives sleep. Saturn offers the limits of necessity and the balancing force of justice. Jupiter gives peace and Mars gives struggle. Venus offers love and Mercury wisdom.

When God hears what the gods will offer, he thinks humankind into existence. At first humanity is just a thought – a soul. It is unable to tend and look after the Earth as God wishes, so God gives each human a mortal body within which to house the immortal soul. To do this he first creates Nature. She is like a beautiful woman, and God makes her mistress of the world. She produces the seeds of natural life. Seeing in the human soul an image of God, Nature falls in love and merges with her beloved. This is the blending of body and soul which produces each one of us. Hence all human beings have a dual nature, being a combination of an immortal soul and a mortal body. We honor both sides of our nature when we serve God by administering the natural world for him.

Finally God gives humankind a last great gift - the ability to reproduce. more than this, he makes the process a holy loving sacrament which reflects the marriage of matter and spirit that creates the Cosmos. The sacred bond of love unites man and woman together, so that they may share their essential qualities with each other.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…The Gods

The Hermetica…The Gods

To the ancient Egyptians the night sky was seen as the body of the black goddess sprinkled with stars. In the Hermetica she is known as the great goddess Destiny, whose unalterable laws are written in the unchanging star-fields of the constellations. Against the background of these stars circle the planets, ruled by the great goddess they administer her fate to all things upon the Earth. 

Although the constellations of the stars contain the Destiny of everything, the five visible planets and the sun and moon are the forces which administer this Destiny. Hermes therefore calls these powers ‘gods’.

Destiny, working through the planetary gods, governs all of creation. They pour an uninterrupted stream of Life-force into all forms of matter; making them ceaselessly change from one state to another in a process we call living and dying. The gods are ruled by the goddess Destiny who makes sure that all they do accords with God’s will.

The god, Ra is the sun which sends down energy to the earth. Whilst God is the hidden Light which cannot be seen with the physical eyes because it is pure energy. Ra is the visible light placed at the centre of our solar system.

The sun is an image of God, and as God gives Life to the whole universe, so the sun gives life to the animals and plants of the Earth. The light of the sun nurtures nature in the same way that the Light of God nurtures our souls.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy



The Hermetica…The Hierarchy of Creation

God creates an ordering principle – the Mind of the Cosmos. This ordering principle continually organizes matter into a beautifully ordered physical Cosmos. Time is one of the principles by which the Cosmos is ordered. The existence of time means that everything within the Cosmos is constantly changing, but in a measured way.

God is the Goodness that creates Life. The Mind of the Cosmos is the fundamental laws of nature – the permanent and unchanging principles which govern Life. The physical Cosmos is the beautiful order of nature within which Life exists. Time is the governing principle of the Cosmos which produces change. Constant change is the process of everything living and dying.

The Cosmic Mind is an idea expressed by the Mind of God. The physical Cosmos is a thought expressed the Mind of the Cosmos. At the heart of the Cosmos is the life-giving sun which is an image of the life-giving soul at the heart of every person.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…The Circle of Time

The Hermetica…The Circle of Time

Everything in the Cosmos is constantly changing. Things are born, pass away and come into existence again, like old plants dying each winter to return as new shoots each spring. All these changes, however, are governed by unchanging natural laws. In the way, therefore, it could also be said that the Cosmos is essentially changeless. 

Time regulates the natural processes of change in the Cosmos. It is measured by the recurring cycles of the stars and the sun, which revolve in fixed and permanent orbits. Unlike our modern picture of time as a straight line from the past to the future, Hermes sees time as a circle. A day is a circle of time which begins again when the sun rises each morning. The year is a circle of time measured by the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Vaster circles of time are expressed by the movements of the constellations of the stars. All of these cycles eventually bring things back to where they started. It is impossible to say where that is, however,, for a circle has no starting point – you cannot say where it begins and where it ends. 

Hermes ultimately points to a deeper understanding of time. The past has gone and does not exist. The future has yet to happen and does not exist. The present moment passes so quickly that it has no permanence. Before we have even said ‘now’, the moment has gone. We can never catch the present, so in what way could it be said to exist? This mystical insight into the illusory nature of time is a way to glimpse the Oneness of God, who exists beyond time. For God, there is no past, present and future – only eternity. Freeing ourselves from the illusion of time is yet another way we can experience God.

The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…The Living Cosmos

The Hermetica…The Living Cosmos

In the beginning there is unity. Unity separates into two fundamental forces, which like the negative and positive poles of a battery, generate everything. Hermes describes them as Light and Life, which become Mind and Soul. We experience them as thoughts and feelings.

The Oneness of God is both Light and Life. These two forces are the parents of the Mind of the Cosmos. This was experienced by Hermes in his original mystical vision as the ‘Word’ which calmed the dark waters – the fundamental laws of nature which bring order to the chaos. 

The physical Cosmos is a perfect reflection of this ordering principle – the Mind of the Cosmos (the Word) is in turn a reflection of God, just as a spoken word reflects the intention of its speaker. Since God is All-Goodness, the Cosmos is therefore also Good.

Because the Cosmos is made in the image of its Creator it too is an immortal living being. It is therefore impossible that any part of it can be dead. At its conception it was filled with energy, which as modern science has now proved can neither be created or destroyed. Unlike the myriad forms that it passes through, energy itself is immortal. 

God is the source of this energy which, through the laws of Nature creates life. The Cosmic Mind receives energy from God and gives it to all the things within the Cosmos. Through this process, the Cosmos is completely saturated with Soul – the Life Force. Everything in it is alive. Nothing is dead, not even so called inanimate things. The Cosmos is a great living being which in turn gives Life to all the lesser beings it contains. It is the whole which nourishes its parts, like a parent caring for its children.


The Hermetica,
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

The Hermetica…Contemplate Creation

The Hermetica…Contemplate Creation

                                                       

When we look at the world only our physical eyes, God is nowhere to be seen. But if we look with our thoughts, we see with spiritual understanding. Suddenly God is everywhere. In this ecstatic state everything we see and touch is known to be a part of God, and we understand that God’s whole purpose in creating the world was so that through it we could see him.

The Cosmos is his body, and we can come to know him by contemplating its extraordinary order and beauty. Hermes asks us to consider the constant revolutions of the stars in the night sky; the laws of fate, which he calls Necessity; the goodness of everything that has happened and is happening. Could this all be so perfect without a Supreme Mind which maintains such exquisite order? Could it all just be happening accidentally?

He reminds us of the marvel of our own birth. Who created us in the womb? Who perfectly crafted the individual details of our bodies? Statues and portraits don’t just happen, they are sculpted and painted. Surely such a work of art as beautiful and complex as our own physical forms must be the work of a master craftsman? The modern view is that we are a creation of the laws of nature. Hermes would not disagree with this; he would simply ask, 'Who decreed these laws?'

He is trying to return us to a childlike sense of awe in the face of the wonders of life. The world is a miracle, yet we take it for granted. If we take the time to reflect, it becomes obvious that we are surrounded by profound mysteries. the universe is a gigantic work of art, signed by an unknown master. Humble amazement is a prerequisite for coming to know God


The Hermetica
Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

“Images” or Wrong Conclusion, Two

“Images” or Wrong Conclusion, Two

The wrong conclusions that form an image are drawn in ignorance or half-knowledge and therefore cannot remain in the conscious mind, and could actually have been carried over from previous incarnations. As the child grows up, his or her newly learned intellectual knowledge contradicts the old emotional “knowledge.” The person pushes the emotional down until it disappears from conscious sight. Yet the more the emotional knowledge is hidden, the more potent it becomes. These unconscious images then restrict the unfolding of the person’s potential. Therefore, a conscious effort has to be made to bring these images into awareness and learn how to inactivate them.

To find out if such unconscious images exist in you on a deeper level you can use an infallible key that will give you faultless answers. This is: How do you feel about yourself and about your life? How meaningful, fulfilled, and rich is your life? Do you feel secure with others? Do you feel comfortable about your most intimate self in the presence of others, or at least with certain people with whom you have a goal in common? How much joy are you capable of feeling, giving, and receiving? Are you plagued with resentments, anxiety, and tension, or with loneliness and a sense of isolation? Do you need a lot of over-activity in order in order to alleviate anxiety? Actually, the fact that you do not consciously feel anxious, by no means proves that you are without anxiety. Many start out on the path without awareness of their anxiety, but they feel dead, numb, listless, and paralyzed. This may be a sign that the anxiety was overcome through an artificial deadening process. This path cannot skip the step of making you first feel your anxiety and then feel whatever the anxiety hides. Only then can real aliveness come.

Exhilaration, enthusiasm, joyousness, and the unique blend of excitement and peace that connotes spiritual wholeness are a result of inner truthfulness. When these states are absent, then truthfulness must be absent. It is as simple as that, my friends.

So if you are prepared to embark on the journey into yourself to find, acknowledge, and bring out whatever is in you, if you summon all your inner truthfulness and commitment for the journey, if you find the courage and humility not to appear other than you are even in your own eyes, then you have indeed every right to expect that this path will help you realize your full life, and fulfill your longing in every conceivable way. This is a realistic hope. You will increasingly know it to be so.


The Pathwork of Self-Transformation
Eva Pierrakos

“Images” or Wrong Conclusions

“Images” or Wrong Conclusions

On these concealed, unconscious levels, misconceptions are formed in early childhood. These distorted perceptions of reality continue to influence the behaviour of the adult. They develop into firmly held conclusions about life, which I like to call “images,” because they form rigid patterns as if engraved on the soul substance.

An image is made up of misconceptions, distorted feelings and physical blocks. A conclusion drawn from distorted perception is a wrong conclusion; therefore images are actually wrong conclusions about the nature of reality that are so firmly embedded in a person’s psyche that they become behaviour-controlling signals in life situations. A person may have several images, but underlying them all is a main image, which is the key to the basic negative attitude toward life.

Let me give you some examples. An image formed because of a particular situation in the child’s family might be that the display of emotion, especially of warm feelings, is a sign of weakness and will lead to one’s being hurt. Although this is a personal image, it my be reinforced by the societal mass image that, especially for a man, the display and physical expression of warm feelings are unmanly and weak because they mean losing control. An individual with this image will then, in any situation where he could emotionally open himself, obey the signal of the images instead of spontaneously responding to the actual situation or to the person, which would be the positive, life-affirming response. He will also act toward others in a way to which they will respond negatively and confirm his false belief. In this way he deprives himself of pleasure and restricts the flow of the life force, creating inner tensions and further feeding his image. Thus, negative compulsive patterns, or self-perpetuating vicious circles, are created.

Or, a baby cries because she is hungry, but the mother does not respond. however, when she does not cry, the mother will come and feed her. So the little girl draws the conclusion that if she shows her need, she will not be heard, but if she does not, she will get attention. then the following conclusion is drawn: "In order to have my need fulfilled, I must not show that I have a need." With this particular mother, perhaps not showing the need actually did work for a while, but, obviously, in later years such an attitude will produce the opposite result. Since no one will know that this woman has any special needs, no one will fulfill them. However, since she is completely ignorant of her "image," that is, the wrong conclusion about showing needs, because it has long ago sunk into her unconscious, she will go through life showing her needs less and less, hoping that eventually someone will reward her for being so unassuming, and not understanding why she is so unfulfilled. She does not know that it is her behavior that makes life confirm her wrong image. For images have a magnetic power.

The Pathwork of Self-Transformation
Eva Pierrakos