The ageless wisdom

Luminaries and impulses

At all times there have been people who have reached the highest self-knowledge and released themselves from the physical glamour and illusions of life. These persons have claimed that they have found what they searched for, and that they consciously were part of the spiritual reality, and therefore it was their mission to lead other people to the reunion with the Highest. Through history great, luminous torches have been lighted from time to time to lead mankind towards illumination . These conscious souls, prophets, founders of religions or saviours have been powerful catalysts for entire cultural epochs, and with their messages and doctrines they have affected innumerable crowds of people to change themselves and their surroundings. These enlightened guides have as great initiators affected and raised the human consciousness both at the collective and at the individual level.

All cultures have their own archetypal initiators and spiritual masters. The ancient Eqypt gave birth to Hermes (Tehuti or Thoth ) and later Akhnaton. India was the birthplace of Patanjali, Shankara, Buddha , Krishna and numerous rishies and avatars. Persia was the place of Zarathustra , just as Greece had Pythagoras , Socrates, Plato, Parmenides and Thales as well as a number of other spiritual thinkers. Lao Tse and Kung Fu Tse were active in China, and Quetzalcoatl and Deganawida characterized South and North America each in their age. The Middle East reared a number of luminaries from Oannes and Moses to Mohammad and Christ. The number of spiritual giants seems to be innumerable. In their own way they have influenced and changed their respective cultures and the human consciousness towards new enlightenments and perspectives. They did it in different ways and they have emphasized various aspects of the spiritual wisdom simply because of the fact that they lived in different cultures at different times.

The Christian Era

However, sometimes we do not notice the individual pioneers and initiators, but rather entire currents, which turn and twist like stimulating rivers in the cultural landscape. In the Christian Era it was in the marginal currents among the Gnostics, Kathars and the many mystics that the idea of eternal wisdom thrived. St Clement of Alexandria and Origenes, Valentinus and Basilides are examples of Gnostics, who worked esoterically with the Christian impulse. There were also Jewish thinkers and mystics; Filon from Alexandria, a Gnostic who tried to unveil the hidden esoteric of the Old Testament. In the following centuries a number of great individuals took part in passing on the wisdom. The wise man Ammonious Sakkas taught theosophy in Alexandria, and among his students was the important Neo-Platonist Plotinus, whose thinking is the purest expression of the ageless wisdom or theosophy that can be pointed out. Later on figures like Dionysios Areopagita and Proklos initiated the early esotericism of the Middle Ages. Also in the theological field the esoteric trends were significant. The prisca theologia was a trend in the Renaissance based on the idea that an unbroken line of spiritual wisdom exists from Hermes Trismegistos via Moses to personalities like Zarathustra, Orfeus, Pythagoras and Plato. These wise men were, according to the disciples of the prisca theologia, successors of the divine enlightenment, which Christ completed through his Act.

Later on we meet an esoteric movement behind the Grail tradition, a line that affected a number of different groups in Europe. The minnesingers and troubadours were also in the subsequent centuries the keepers of the esoteric teaching, and the anonymous architects of the cathedrals immortalized the spiritual enlightenments into the geometry and symbolics of the Christian temples. The alchemists phrased the spiritual enlightenments into chemical formulas and into not very accessible texts and hieroglyphs. Paracelsus, Michael Maier and many others continued these thoughts in the Renaissance. Among the Jews it was the cabbalists who expressed the spirit freely, and among the Islamic groups it was the Sufi mystics who formulated the heretical poetry.