The history of esoterics

Pythagoras

If we wish to look at the history of the esoteric teachings, there are not many documents but the esoteric to look into. The reason for this is simple: esoterics implies "concealed teachings" and has not been well known by the broader public. Many may ask why a teaching has to be concealed if it is so useful, but the reason is simple even here. In our history we have seen, over and over again, how knowledge has been abused by people who were not ready for it. As we all know, knowledge is power. For this reason "the wise ones" have chosen to make certain parts of esoterics secret and otherwise a little difficult to discover.

It all goes back to the time when we had a culture here on Earth, now known as Atlantis. The existence of this culture is often denied and ridiculed by our scientific authorities, disregarding the fact that there are a number of findings, which clearly indicate that civilizations—much older than those researched in conventional history—have existed. Throughout this Atlantean time, some elite priests (the lower priesthood), the so-called "black priesthood" started to misuse their knowledge and act for personal benefits. The rest of the people followed and we got a society filled with egoism and materialistic thinking (reminds somewhat of our own society, authors remark).

This caught the attention of the light beings who then, as now, watch over humanity and are responsible for us. They are sometimes called "the Brothers of Light," "the white Lodge" or in esoterics "The (planetary) hierarchy." These light beings decided that the esoteric teachings should be kept in closed schools, said to have been instituted some 45’000 years ago.

As time went by, Atlantis disappeared after a series of natural disasters and mankind was thrown back into barbarism for thousands of years. Even though we eventually started building new civilizations, we have lost much of our cultural heritage. We don’t recognize our own roots.

Unfortunately, the teachings of the esoteric masters soon decayed when “normal people” were attempting to interpret the teachings. Religions and personal cults followed and the ideas that didn´t fit were rewritten or removed. We might now understand why Pythagoras kept his school so secret.

As we approach our own current time, the planetary hierarchy decided that humankind had reached a sufficient enough level to once again make some of the esoteric teachings public. But only things that could not be misused were allowed to be released. The person responsible for this was Helena P. Blavatsky, who during the late 19th century published a large number of esoteric works. She also started the Theosophical movement.

After that time we could say that some of the teachings were no longer esoteric, (hidden), but exoteric, (open). In spite of this the teachings are still called esoterics, mainly because they are still found and read only by a few.

The content of Blavatsky’s books is vast, but it is difficult to read. With her causal consciousness, H.P.B. could see how our world worked and she had telepathic contact with the masters. Unfortunately, she had great difficulties writing in a systematic manner, yielding a body of work incomprehensible to individuals on lower levels.

Some so-called disciples — advanced humans connected to the Hierarchy — wrote large volumes of esoteric literature during the 20th century. The most well known such writer is undoubtedly Alice Bailey, whom many consider to be the pre-eminent esoterician. The Swedish esoterician Laurency (pseudonym) should also be mentioned. His books show considerable clarity and inspiration and could be  considered easier to read than both H.P.B. and A.B.

Finally we should also mention that the spiritual movement we see today in "new age" could be described as esoteric thoughts downscaled to emotional thinking. Unfortunately that also brings along some degenerate offshoots. Prophet-like preachers, who speak of ascension for the whole of mankind in our lifetime, along with spaceships, which will come down and bring us all to a new Earth and so on.

At such occasions, it feels good to sit down with a book by Bailey or Laurency, and remind ourselves that emotionally influenced religions and movements have come and gone throughout the millennia, while the esoteric teachings have stayed the same.

A new age?

In the new age there is a lot of talk about ascension. The esoteric teachings also emphasize that we live in a time of change. It´s a fact that the disturbing and changing era we live in today was described by esotericians during the beginning of the 20th century. But here we see a different time frame than what we sometimes can find in the new age teachings. Humankind is going through a period of transformation that will continue for hundreds of years. Old systems must be torn down so that new and superior systems can replace them. This is what we see happening right now, which is also what has happened several times before in our history.

So when we see all the misery, destruction, greed, idiotizing TV-programs and so on, which seem to fill up our society today, we need to recognize that it is part of a planned process where an old system is being torn down to be replaced by a new and improved one. We just have to be careful not to fall into the "treadmill" ourselves.

Edited by Peter Astarci