Think of the
Cosmos as a university where we spirit beings go to study, develop our
character, obtain every knowledge and acquire desired skills toward the
attainment of our goal of spiritual perfection and union with the One God.
Ignorant and innocent at our creation, gradually, one step at a time, we grow
and evolve. After one prerequisite lesson is learned, the next forward studies
are administered. Necessarily periodically, there is an upgrading in our divine
instruction.
The upgradings are called by many names and come at different periods in our
history. Today, some refer to the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Aquarius,
the Second Coming of Jesus or the emergence of the Holy Spirits.
Everyone needs to Study and Prepare > http://goo.gl/Ekozda
MODERN CIVILIZATION has taken giant leaps forward in just the last few hundred years.
Everywhere, there have been very great changes. It is now becoming increasingly
more difficult for man to remember that only a few thousand years before,
things were not as they are now.
02 Then,
electricity had not yet been discovered: there were no telephones, no radios
and no television sets; and at night, just to keep warm, people had to keep an
open fire. There were no automobiles. Most people walked while the more
affluent rode on the backs of animals. There were no trains or buses, airplanes
or spaceships. Water couldn’t be had by turning a faucet.
03 There was a very high illiteracy rate. Reading, writing and the beginnings
of a formal education were accessible only to members of the nobility and the
monastic scholars. Books were a rarity and there were no newspapers. People
believed that the world was flat, that the sun was God and that the earth was
the center of the Universe. There clearly was a need to raise the level of
consciousness of the people. One of the more effective ways was through the
teaching of religion.
04 To bring the people forward, the wise men of old had formulated only the
simplest possible explanations and teachings. They were all that the people
could understand, then. During those early times, people were told to accept
God’s divine instruction given through prophets and priests without question.
Moreover, they were compelled to blindly follow the teachings of the church
under the threat of excommunication or the pains of hell. There were good and
valid reasons behind this injunction.
05 Certainly, little children should not be allowed to play with matches
because they might burn the house down. For much the same reason, the higher
knowledge was not revealed to the common people.
06 They being morally deficient, any such advantage over others would have been
misused and utilized mainly for selfish interests, resulting in harm to others
as well as to themselves. Further, being intellectually inferior, they would
find extreme difficulty in trying to understand advanced concepts. Such
elevated ideas would serve only to confuse them all the more. First, they must
be thoroughly grounded in the basics in much the same way that we must be fully
conversant with simple arithmetic before we can begin to study higher
mathematics. Based on these considerations, it was deemed to the people’s best
advantage that, in the meanwhile, they should rather concentrate their time and
efforts on matters which were better suited to their particular stage of
development.
07 For their own good, therefore, the higher teachings were withheld from those
who were not ready for them. However, to a very few deserving students, the
higher truths were taught in secret. In the East, the Masters taught their
disciples and initiates in the temples of higher learning. Christ, himself,
taught most of the people in parables but spoke plainly to those few who were
ready for more advanced instruction (1, 2).
08 Today, however, the times have greatly changed. Now, modern man is
considered sufficiently evolved to begin to understand. In fact, thinking men
and women everywhere find the old teachings to be sorely inadequate, even
unreasonable and illogical, running counter to the dictates of their ordinary
common sense. To them, the old explanations can no longer suffice. And their
dissatisfaction gives rise to a compelling desire to search for deeper meaning
and explanations to the mysteries of life.
09 Clearly, today, the reasons for withholding the teachings no longer apply.
And, in preparation for the coming Age of Enlightenment, the knowledge
is to be disseminated to all the people. Still, as always,
understanding can come only as a result of continuous strivings.
10 In preparation for our life on earth, we choose to undergo many years of
rigorous studies in order to attain to some degree of worldly success. We spend
long, hard years of sweat and tears, passing through every phase, from grade
school and, hopefully, on to the more advanced degree courses just so that we
may have a better life with better opportunities that are not available to the
less educated among us. And yet, when it relates to spiritual matters, far too
many leave everything to chance, and they insist falsely that these matters cannot
be learned.
11 To all the questions of life, the answers can be found.
