foreign hello there and good evening everyone welcome to this first part the introduction and the beginning of our journey through aldous huxley's the perennial philosophy so this evening i'll be reading some introductory material the introduction from the book and i've also found a great essay and the wikipedia page so while we just wait for everyone to come and join us who will be coming in this evening i'll just read the blurb the back of the book just to give them a moment to come in so it says here the perennial philosophy aldous huxley writes may be found among the traditional law of peoples in every region of the world and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions with great wit and stunning intellect drawing on a diverse array of faiths including zen buddhism hinduism taoism christian mysticism and islam huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine the perennial philosophy includes selections from meister eckhart rumi and lao tzu as well as the bhagavad-gita tibetan book of the dead diamond sutra and upanishads among many others so there's a load of wisdom so much wisdom and insight that can come for you through the perennial philosophy there is um 27 chapters so we'll be going live 27 times before we get to the end and like i said in my video about um reviewing the perennial philosophy oh yeah i'll be trying to go live as often as i can one chapter at a time so that we can take it in and digest it fully and so yeah like i said this evening i'll be reading the introduction to the book the wikipedia page for perennial philosophy not for the book but for the actual philosophy and then a great um essay that i found that comes from a sort of neoplatonic perspective which is something something that really interests me and so the perennial philosophy through a neoplatonic lens would be very interesting hello there google google good evening i'm doing very well thanks google google thanks for asking and how are you it's good to see you and hello there green grapes lovely to see you as always and so yeah before we begin please like the video subscribe to the channel and comment with any questions or comments just the statements that you want to make in the chat um you can support me in various ways uh through my patreon book club community through paypal and also the easiest way is in the super chats and super stickers and all the links are in the description to patreon and paypal um hello there sonia nice to see you as well so yeah as as everyone's coming in i think we'll begin like i say we'll read the introduction the wikipedia page and then a good essay and that should get us a lot of information as to the introduction to this great philosophy so the introduction from aldous huxley's book parenes the phrase was coined by leibniz but the thing the metaphysic that recognizes a divine reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to or even identical with divine reality the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the imminent and transcendent ground of all being the thing is immemorial and universal rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional law of primitive peoples in every region of the world and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions a version of this highest common factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than 25 centuries ago and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages of asia and europe in the pages that follow i have brought together a number of selections from these writings chosen mainly for their significance because they effectively illustrated some particular point in the general system of the perennial philosophy but also for their intrinsic beauty and memorableness these selections are arranged under various heads and embedded so to speak in a commentary of my own designed to illustrate and connect to develop and where necessary to elucidate that's very kind of you google google i'm glad to hear you're doing well and and looking forward to this it's going to be great it's going to be a great journey and a great series so i can't wait knowledge is a function of being when there is a change in the being of the noah there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing for example the being of a child is transformed by growth and education into that of a man among the results of this transformation is a revolutionary change in the way of knowing and the amount and character of the things known as the individual grows up his knowledge becomes more conceptual and systematic in form and its factual utilitarian content is enormously increased but these gains are offset by a certain deterioration in the quality of immediate apprehension a blunting and a loss of intuitive power or consider the change in his being which the scientist is able to induce mechanically by means of his instruments equipped with a spectroscope and a 60 inch reflector an astronomer becomes so far as eyesight is concerned a superhuman creature and as we should naturally expect the knowledge possessed by this superhuman creature is very different both in quantity and quality from that which can be acquired by a stargazer with unmodified merely human eyes nor are changes in the knowers physiological or intellectual being the only ones to affect his knowledge what we know depends also on what as moral beings we choose to make ourselves practice in the words of william james may change our theoretical horizon and this is a two-fold way it may lead into new worlds and secure new powers knowledge we could never attain remaining what we are may be attainable in consequences of higher powers and a higher life which may which we may morally achieve end quote to put to put the matter more succinctly blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god and the same idea has been expressed by the sufi poet jalaluddin rumi in terms of a scientific metaphor the astral label of the mysteries of god is love this book i repeat is an anthology of the perennial philosophy but though an anthology it contains few extracts from the writings of professional men of letters and though illustrating a philosophy hardly anything from the professional philosophers the reason for this is very simple the perennial philosophy is primarily concerned with the one divine reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds but the nature of this one reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfill certain conditions making themselves loving pure in heart and poor in spirit why should this be so we do not know it is just one of those facts which we have to accept whether we like them or not and however implausible and unlikely they may seem nothing in our everyday experience gives us any reason for supposing that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen and yet when we subject water to certain rather drastic treatments the nature of its constituent elements becomes manifest similarly nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason for supposing that the mind of the average sensual man has as one of its constituents something resembling or identical with the reality substantial to the manifold world and yet when that mind is subjected to certain rather drastic treatments the divine element of which it is in part at least composed becomes manifest not only to the mind itself but also by its reflection in external behavior to other minds it is only by making physical experiments that we can discover the intimate nature of matter and its potentialities and it is only by making psychological and moral experiments that we can discover the intimate nature of mind and its potentialities in the ordinary circumstances of average sensual life these potentialities of the mind remain latent and unmanifested if we would realize them we must fulfill certain conditions and obey certain rules which experience has shown empirically to be valid in regard to few professional philosophers and men of letters is there any evidence that they did very much in the way of fulfilling the necessary conditions of direct spiritual knowledge when poets or metaphysicians talk about the subject matter of the perennial philosophy it is generally at second hand but in every age there have been some men and women who choose to fulfill the conditions upon which alone as a matter of brute empirical fact such immediate knowledge can be had and of these a few have left accounts of the reality they were thus unable to apprehend and have tried to relate in one comprehensive system of thought the given facts of this experience with the given facts of their other experiences to such first-hand exponents of the perennial philosophy those who knew them have generally given the name of saint or prophet sage or enlightened one and it is mainly to these because there is good reason for supposing that they know what they were talking about and not to the professional philosophers or men of letters that i have gone for my selections in india two classes of scripture are recognized the shruti or inspired writings which are their own authority since they are the product of immediate insight into ultimate reality and the smriti which are based upon the shruti and from them derive such authority as they have the shruti in shankara's words depends upon direct perception the smriti plays a part analogous to induction since like induction it derives its authority from an author other than itself this book then is an anthology with explanatory comments of passages drawn from the shruti and smriti of many times and places unfortunately familiarity with traditional hallowed writings tends to breed not indeed contempt but something which for practical purposes is almost as bad namely a kind of reverential insensibility a stooper of the spirit and inward deafness to the meaning of the sacred words for this reason when selecting material to illustrate the doctrines of the perennial philosophy as they were formulated in the west i have gone almost always to sources other than the bible this christian smriti from which i have drawn is based upon the shruti of the canonical books but has the great advantage of being less well known and therefore more vivid and so to say more audible than they are moreover much of this mriti is the work of genuinely saintly men and women who have qualified themselves to know at firsthand what they are talking about consequently it may be regarded as being itself a form of inspired and self-validating shruti and this in a much big in a much higher degree than many of the writings now included in the biblical canon in recent years a number of attempts have been made to work out a system of empirical theology but in spite of the subtlety and intellectual power of writers as sorely o man and tenant the effort is met with only a partial success even in the hands of its ableist exponents empirical theology is not particularly convincing the reason it seems to me must be sought in the fact that the empirical theologians have confined their attention more or less exclusively to the experience of those whom the theologians of an older school called the unregenerate that is to say the experience of people who have not gone very far in fulfilling the necessary conditions of spiritual knowledge but it is a fact confirmed and reconfirmed during two or three thousand years of religious history that the ultimate reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended except by those who have made themselves loving pure in heart and poor in spirit this being so it is hardly surprising that a theology based upon the experience of nice ordinary unregenerate people should carry so little conviction this kind of empirical theology is on precisely the same footing as an empirical astronomy based upon the experience of naked eye observers with the unaided eye a small faint smudge can be detected in the constellation of orion and doubtless and imposing cosmological theory could be based upon the observation of this smudge but no amount of such theorizing however ingenious could ever tell us as much about the galactic and extragalactic nebulae as can direct acquaintance by means of a good telescope camera and spectroscope analogously no amount of theorizing about such hints as may be darkly glimpsed within the ordinary unregenerate experience of the manifold world can tell us as much about divine reality as can be directly apprehended by a mind in a state of detachment charity and humility natural science is empirical but it does not confine itself to the experience of human beings in their merely human and unmodified condition why empirical theologians should feel themselves obliged to submit to this handicap goodness only knows and of course so long as they can find empirical experience within these all to human limits they are doomed to the perpetual stultification of their best efforts from the material they have chosen to consider no mind however brilliantly gifted can infer more than a set of possibilities or at the very best species probabilities the self-validating certainty of direct awareness cannot in the very nature of things be achieved except by those equipped with the moral astral astrolabe of god's mysteries if one is not oneself a sage or saint the best thing one can do in the field of metaphysics is to study the works of those who were and who because they had modified their merely human mode of being were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge so i'll read that last bit again because this uh a great point that aldous huxley is making here in his introduction is the the end of the introduction his final statement if one is not oneself a sage or saint the best thing one can do in the field of metaphysics is to study the works of those who were and who because they had modified their merely human mode of being were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge so that's the end of orders huxley's introduction and he is talking there he says very interestingly that he doesn't um draw anything from professional philosophers or men of letters because he doesn't feel that they have the essence and the insight that some of the great texts that i uh said at the beginning here the um rumi laotsu the bhagavad-gita tibetan book of the dead upanishads and diamond sutra he says here they're the shruti the inspired works of scripture and the smithi is the shmiti is like commentaries on the shruti so this is an anthology he says but don't go anywhere guys because we're not finished yet if you have uh if you're on your desktop or you have two devices and you want to go to wikipedia quickly and pull up um just type in perennial philosophy not if you type in the perennial philosophy it will come to the article about aldous huxley's book but i'm going to read the article perennial philosophy the subtitle is 15th century philosophical idea that views all religious traditions as sharing a single truth or origin so now i'm going to read the article from wikipedia on the perennial philosophy so that we can further understand it from a different perspective of all of the people who have um all of the what's the word the uh all of the contributors to this wikipedia article and then i've got a lovely essay for you so we're not finished yet because if i just read the intro it'd be 20 minutes and that would be a pitiful live read wouldn't it on a sunday night so let's get into this article from wikipedia the perennial philosophy latin philosophia parenes also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exotic exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown perennialism has its root in the renaissance interest in neoplatonism and its idea of the one from which all existence emanates marcilio facino 1433-1499 sought to integrate hermeticism with greek and jewish christian thought discerning a prisa theologia which could be found in all ages giovanni pico de la mirandola suggested that truth could be found in many rather than just two traditions he proposed the harmony between the thought of plato and aristotle and saw aspects of the prisa theologia in avaroyos the quran the kabbalah and other sources agostino stucco 1497 uh to 1548 coined the term philosophia perennis so he's saying that agostino stuko but orders huxley's saying that leibniz coined it so you can argue about that amongst yourselves if you want to a more popular interpretation argues for universalism the idea that all religions underneath seeming differences point to the same truth in the early 19th century the transcendentalists propagated the idea of a metaphysical truth and universalism which inspired the unitarians who proselytized among indian elites towards the end of the 19th century the theosophical society further popularized universalism not only in the western world but also in western colonies in the 20th century universalism was further popularized through the advaita vedanta inspired traditionalist school which argued for a metaphysical single origin of the orthodox religions and by orders huxley and his book the perennial philosophy which was inspired by neo vedanta and the traditionalist school so i think um the theosophical society uh i can't remember her name now um no it's not going to come up i was going to say the woman who's related to it but i can't recall her name now so maybe it'll come to me in a moment um no definition renaissance the idea of a perennial philosophy originated with a number of renaissance theologians who took inspiration from neoplatonism and from the theory of forms marcilio facino argued that there is an underlying unity to the world the soul or love which has a counterpart in the realm of ideas according to giovanni pico de la merandola a student of facino truth could be found in many rather than just two traditions the traditionalist school the contemporary scholarly oriented traditionalist school continues this metaphysical orientation according to the traditionalist school the perennial philosophy is absolute truth and infinite presence absolute truth is the perennial wisdom sophia parenes that stands as the transcendent source of all the intrinsically orthodox religions of humankind infinite presence is the perennial religion religio perennis that lives within the heart of all intrinsically orthodox religions the traditionalist school discerns a transcendent and imminent dimension namely the discernment of the real or absolute that which is permanent and the intentional mystical concentration of the real and the absolute is what gurdjieff refers to the one or the good or god as the skurjev's term for also according to suarez diaz the perennialist philosophy states that the universal truth is the same within each of the world's orthodox religious traditions and is the foundation of their religious knowledge and doctrine each world religion is an interpretation of this universal truth adapted to cater for the psychological intellectual and social needs of a given culture of a given period of history this perennial truth has been rediscovered in each epoch by mystics of all kinds who have revived already existing religions when they had fallen into empty platitudes and hollow ceremonialism shipley further notes that the traditionalist school is oriented on orthodox traditions and rejects modern syncretism and universalism which together create new religions from older religions and compromise the standing traditions and i mentioned in my um video my preview of this that the perennial philosophy the essence of all of these religions is the same it's just that the different cultures in different parts of the world completely different cultures different geographical locations and and different um languages naturally will create something different you'll have taoism and confucianism in the east and hinduism and advanta vedanta and then in the west you'll have neoplatonism or judaism or christianity or islam and they're very different but what the perennial philosophy argues is that at their essence at their core they have the same thing yeah they're trying to do the same thing they're pointing to the same goal so now this is from the um wikipedia article now we get to the part orders huxley and mystical universalism one such universalist was aldous huxley who propagated a universalist interpretation of the world religions inspired by vivekananda's neo vedanta so in orders huxley's autobiography he speaks about a bit later in his life he goes to speak with and talk to and learn from vivekananda who um i believe was part of the advanta vedanta school or neo vedanta they call it here and um yeah that's how he got interested in many of these things lanes of his life and his use and his own use of psychedelic drugs and i've already read on the channel live the doors of perception which is orders huxley's um trip report his expositions of his experience of his time on mescaline according to huxley who popularized the idea of a perennial philosophy with a larger audience the perennial philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the sanskrit formula from asi that thou art the atman or imminent eternal self is one with brahman the absolute principle of all existence and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself to find out who he really is in huxley's 1944 essay in vedanta and the west he describes the minimum working hypothesis the basic outline of the perennial philosophy found in all the mystic branches of the religions of the world that there is a godhead or ground which is the unmanifest principle of all manifestation that the ground is transcendent and imminent that it is possible for human beings to love know and become the ground that to achieve this unitive knowledge to realize the supreme identity is the final end and purpose of human existence that there is a law or dharma which must be obeyed a tao or way which must be followed if humans are to achieve their final end origins the perennial philosophy originates from a blending of neoplatonism and christianity neoplatonism itself has diverse origins in the syncretic culture of the hellenistic period and was an influential philosophy throughout the middle ages and like i said i've got an essay to come after this that draws and comes speaks from a perspective of neoplatonism i feel the classical world the hellenistic period religious syncretism during the hellenistic period alexander the great's campaigns brought about the exchange of cultural ideas on its path throughout most of the known world of his era the greek elusionian mysteries and dionysian dionysian mysteries mixed with such influences as the cult of isis mistreatism and hinduism along with some persian influences such cross-cultural exchange was not new to the greeks the egyptian god osiris and the greek god dionysus had been equated as osiris-theonus by the historian herodotus as early as the 5th century bc hey king arjun nice to see you and if you're interested in the elosinian mysteries and dianusas then you should read the immortality key by brian morerescu it's a fascinating book that delves in to the mysteries of ellucis and dionysus and their very clear similarities and you could argue perennial um essence you know that christianity grew out of elusive but read the book he makes the argument much better than i can the roman world philo of alexandria and i have the the complete works of philo of alexandria upstairs um follower of alexandria 25 bce to circa 50 ce attempted to reconcile greek rationalism with the torah which helped pave the way for christianity with neo-platonism and the adoption of the old testament with christianity as opposed to gnostic roots of christianity philo translated judaism in terms of stoic platonic and neo-pythagorean elements and held that god is super rational and can be reached only through ecstasy he also held that the oracles of god supply the material of moral and religious knowledge neoplatonism neoplatonism arose in the third century ce and persisted until shortly after the closing of the plugtonic academy in athens in ad529 by justinian the first neoplatonists were heavily influenced by plato but also by the platonic tradition that thrived during the six centuries which separated the first of the neoplatonists from plato the work of neoplatonic philosophy involved describing the derivation of the whole of reality from a single principle the one it was founded by plottinus and has been very influential throughout history in the middle ages neoplatonic ideas were integrated into the philosophical and theological works of many of the most important medieval islamic christian and jewish thinkers and this is something very interesting when i first learned it from one of my teachers that um plato the platonic tradition and also neoplatonism had a heavy influence in islamic christian and jewish thinkers many of them were yeah were heavily influenced by it the renaissance ficino and pico della mirandola marcillo facino 1433-1499 believed that the that hermes tris magistas the supposed author of the corpus hermeticum was a contemporary of moses and the teacher of pythagoras and the source of both greek and jewish christian thought he argued that there is an underlying unity to the world the soul or love which has a counterpart in the realm of ideas pelotonic philosophy and christian theology both embody this truth for china was influenced by a variety of philosophers including aristotelian scholasticism and various pseudon pseudonymous and mystical hidings facino saw his thought as a part of a long development of philosophical truth of ancient pre-platonic philosophers including zoriasta hermes trismagistus orpheus aglaio famous and pythagoras who reached their peak in plato the prisa theologia or venerable and ancient theology which embodied the truth and could be found in all ages was a vitally important idea for facino giovanni pico della mirandola 1463-94 a student of fuchino went further than his teacher by suggesting that truth could be found in many rather than just two traditions this proposed the harmony between the thought of plato and aristotle and saw aspects of the prisa theologia in avarose the quran the kabbalah among other sources after the deaths of pico and facino this line of thought expanded and included simphorian champier and francesco giorgio stucco the perennial philosophia libri x the term perennial philosophy was first used by agustino stuko 1497-1548 who used it to title a treatise de perenni philosophia libri x published in 1540 the perenni philosophia was the most sustained attempt at philosophical synthesis and harmony stucco represents the renaissance humanist side of 16th century biblical scholarship in theology although he rejected luther and calvin the perenni philosophia is a complex work which only contains the term philosophy philosophy of perennis twice it states that there is one principle of all things of which there has always been one and the same knowledge among all peoples this single knowledge or sepentia is the key element in his philosophy in that he emphasizes continuity continuity over progress stucco's idea of philosophy is not one conventionally associated with the resident renaissance indeed he tends to believe that the truth is lost over time and is only preserved in the prissy theologica stucco preferred plato to aristotle and saw greater congruence between the former and christianity than the latter philosopher he held that philosophy works in harmony with religion and should lead to knowledge of god and that truth froze flows from a single source more ancient than the greeks stuko was strongly influenced by iamblicus's statement that knowledge of god is innate in all and also gave great importance to hermes tris magisters so yeah the the article goes on and on but i'll leave you to if you're interested in learning more through the wikipedia article you can just yeah type in perennial philosophy and you'll come to that and now i'm just going to read this wonderful essay that i've come across from sunrise magazine in 1984. so this will be something um interesting and the author william thack i think his name is maybe there's more uh or maybe it's fact something but it's an essay from 1984 and he opens his essay with a quote from plotanus who we've learned about in um in the wikipedia article so i'll just read this um well it's quite a long essay but i'm going to read it because it's very interesting and it will help us to understand more the perennial philosophy the perennial philosophy this is a quote from platinus these teachings are therefore no novelties no inventions of today but long since stated if not stressed our doctrine here is the explanation of an earlier and can show the antiquity of these opinions on the testimony of plato himself and that's from platonus's any ads and he had one eight there is an arresting thought in one of plato's dialogues the symposium that love is the midpoint between ignorance and wisdom the mediator between humans and the gods and that through love we attain spiritual understanding saint paul too spoke of love in one of the most beautiful passages of the bible that even if he could speak all the languages of men and angels and had not love he would be a sounding brass and tinkling symbol and even had he the gift of prophecy he knew all mysteries and had faith to move mountains but had not love he would be nothing homage to his master's commandment that ye love one another as i have loved you and in buddhism the ideal human being the bodhisattva who is awakened to the reality behind life's illusions is spoken of as possessing the great loving heart he has arrived at the other shore of enlightenment guided and strengthened by perfecting in himself the two most important virtues in buddhist philosophy karuna and prajna love and discriminating wisdom born of altruism the same theme pervades the word philosophy whose invention is credited to pythagoras for the word is a union of two greek roots philos love and sophia wisdom although usually translated love of wisdom philosophy may equally denote the wisdom of love or alternatively loving wisdom among the several greek terms for love each signifying a different aspect philos and its cognate philia connote friendship and affection as in philanthropy the love of man which motivates charity and philadelphia brotherly love theon of smyrna 2nd century ce wrote that philosophy may be compared to initiation into the mysteries the last part or crowning achievement of which is friendship and communion with divinity thus we may see that the principal aim of greek philosophy originally like buddhism and christianity was the perfection of love and wisdom as a means of becoming one with the source of life moreover each of these traditions implied that the spiritual quest actually begins with love and ends in wisdom that the portals to the heart of being open to those seized by passion for truth and a deep concern for the welfare of all to live to benefit mankind is the first step this is a universal perennial message equally enduring has been humanity's quest for a unifying saving wisdom the idea of a perennial philosophy of a common denominator rather a highest common factor forming the basis of truth in the world's many religious philosophic and scientific systems of thought goes back thousands of years at least the roman statesman and philosopher cicero for example speaking about the existence of the soul after death mentions that not only does he have the authority of all antiquity on his side as well as the teachings of the greek mysteries and of nature but that these things are of old date and have besides the sanction of universal religion it was the 17th century german philosopher leibniz however who popularized the latin phrase philosophia perennis so there we go we in the um wikipedia article it said stuko coined the phrase but in aldous huxley's introduction and in this um article this essay they attribute the term to libnits so like i say argue amongst yourself or decide for yourself yeah who knows but i'm going to give it to libnitz he used it to describe what was needed to complete his own system this was to be an eclectic analysis of the truth and falsehood of all philosophies ancient and modern by which one would draw the gold from the dross the diamond from its mind the light from the shadows and this would be in effect a kind of perennial philosophy a similar aim with the goal of reconciling differing religious philosophies was pursued by ammonia sacas in alexandria 3rd century ce the inspirer of plottinus and the neoplatonic movement ammonius sackas i believe was plotanus's teacher libnitz however laid no claim to inventing the phrase he said uh here we go he said he found it in the writings of a 16th century philia theologian augustine stuke whom he regarded as one of the best christian writers of all time stuke described the perennial philosophy as the originally revealed absolute truth made available to man before his fall completely forgotten in that lapse and only gradually regained in fragmentary form in the subsequent history of human thought much more recently aldous huxley compiled an anthology of the world's religious and mystic tradition which he describes many features common to this philosophy of philosophy in his preface he defines it as follows we've probably already read this but i'll re-read it because this man thinks is important philosophia parenes the metaphysic that recognizes a divine reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to or even identical with divine reality the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the imminent and transcendent ground of all being the thing is immemorial and universal rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional law of primitive peoples in every religion of the world and in its fully developed form it has a place in every one of the higher religions huxley pointed out that he did not turn to the writings of professional philosophers in combining his book but to a few of those rare individuals in history who have chosen to fulfill certain conditions in his words by making themselves loving pure in heart and poor brackets humble in spirit by which they were afforded first hand direct apprehension of divine reality if one were not a sage or saint he felt the next best thing one could do was to study the works of those who were and who because they had modified their merely human mode of being were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge it is not so extraordinary that the core teachings of every major spiritual philosophy are so similar even though the trends the traditions are separated geographically culturally and by vast epochs of time for it rests on the premise that the same theosophy or divine wisdom was universally given forth by every sage and teacher worthy of the name the same exhaustless secret eternal doctrine that krishna had eons ago imparted to vivasrat the son and has been periodically transmitted from age to age bhagavad-gita chapter four and yeah we're working our way through the bhagavad-gita also on the channel and it's interesting to see him quote but yeah i truly believe here we go he's um i couldn't remember the woman from this theosophical society but he's going to mention it now h.p blavatsky madame blavatsky was a big uh influence and i think a founder of the theosophical society the most comprehensive modern presentation of this theo sofia parenes with proofs of its diffusion throughout the world may be found in the writings of h p blavatsky in particular the secret doctrine subtitled the synthesis of science religion and philosophy maybe that's one to bring to the channel later on herself taught by more advanced students she wrote that the teachings however fragmentary and incomplete contained in these volumes belong neither to the hindu the zoroastrian the chaljean nor the egyptian religion neither to buddhism islam judaism nor christianity exclusively the secret doctrine is the essence of all these sprung from it in their origins the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into their original element out of which every mystery and dogma has grown developed and become materialized so she calls it the secret doctrine but sounds like that's synonymous with the perennial philosophy besides elaborating the fundamental teachings and showing their analogy in nature blavatsky explains how the secret wisdom of divine things has been revealed to mankind and periodically renovated throughout history referring to an historical event allegorized allegorized in the garden of eden story in the myth of the promethean fire and also in the hindu story of the descent of mana sapporatas sons of mind she describes how long ages ago divine beings perfected humans of former cycles who are native to higher invisible spheres of cosmic life blended a portion of their consciousness with nascent mankind inflaming them with thinking intelligence in this act of sacrifice and evolutionary necessity they indelibly impressed upon the plastic mind substance of humanity's life important truth so that they would never be utterly lost here then also is the rationale of plato's doctrine that learning is actually a process of reminiscence remembering or rediscovering primordial knowledge embellied in the immortal portion of the soul and i think the greek word is anamnesis remembrance since that ancient time restorations of the wisdom tradition in every part of the globe have been regularly attempted mainly for two reasons first because of erosive forces which in time disfigure each presentation namely that original teachings usually oral are imperfectly remembered or forgotten texts are lost copies and translations are edited word meanings change and people often misinterpret or overlook essential points the second and more compelling reason is that humanity is evolving with likewise evolving needs and when the cry from the collective human heart is sufficient a response from the right quarters is made which will fulfill the needs of the cycle then opening it is well known that the messiahs avatars buddhas prophets and god taught of every nation have come as reformers and transmitters not as originators of anything but the earthly garment of their presentation woven out of available materials yet it is also to be noted that the messengers are seldom well known to their contemporaries nor is the import of their message fully understood all innovation attracts opposition powerful dragons surround the grail and that's interesting because um if you remember from the end of orders huxley's brave new world where john savage is speaking with mustafa monde and he says people don't need god these days because god's old they want new things and simple things and then he says something like um or john savage said god never changes god doesn't change and then he says but people do and the modern people of brave new world the civilized ones yeah they need a different god so their god is soma pleasure you know sensuality and not the traditional orthodox that you would consider religion but anyway that just made me think that passage there um made me think of the end of brave new world our own age like every other is replete with false prophets who's often fascinating mixture of truth and error has led many astray into productive even dangerous sidelines how then we may ask are we to determine what is generally of the spirit and what is chaff though it requires persevering and discriminating study we can apply the tests of perenniality and universality is the teaching explicitly stated or implied by the world's great spiritual teachers and what is equally important does it bear the hallmark of spirit is its appeal to the selfless altruistic side of our nature so guys we're coming to the uh yeah the last few paragraphs so if you've got any questions or any statements that you want me to share put those in the chat now because yeah i'll read this passage and then if no one's got anything to say or ask then that'll be it for this evening so the universal physical and metaphysical is all one reality and according to simple logic there can only be one truth however limited varied and seemingly divergent may be its expressions in human language the divisive influence of dogmatic theologies of the attempt to arrogate truth under banners of any kind including those of science and philosophy can affect human welfare only negatively perhaps it is best to remember then that like love most of us are about halfway between ignorance and wisdom if we have intimations of divine realities about which we seek fuller knowledge or if we seek only to be an active force for good in the world but need a philosophy that will help us weather the storms of life and the doldrums we can be confident that such a knowledge exists which satisfies both heart and intellect humanity is not bereft of the compassionate guardianship of the gods and has never been both they and their earthly representatives have ever held out the compass of loving with them as the surest guide to our destination in following the cause charted by these advanced wayfarers not only can we discover what is true in life and what is not but we will be fitting ourselves to express the perennial qualities of spirit so yeah guys that's it for this evening and like i say uh we read first through aldous huxley's perennial philosophy introduction i read a little bit from the wikipedia page but to be honest it's quite dry and academic and just fact based compared to huxley and this other man um from the sunrise review from 1984 so i really enjoyed that essay as well and i hope you did too and yeah the next chapter uh that we'll be reading tomorrow at nine and i'll put the link up the live stream link right after this is that art thou that we referenced uh in the thingy and we've got lots of quotes so there's um a long quote from the chandogya upanishad quotes from meister eckhart william law um a long long quote from adi shankara i think chuangzhou young chi tashi i've never heard of that from kabir saint bernards and catherine there's loads of quotes like he says there's um philo judea um jalaladin rumi hey johann bradley nice to see you sadly we're just finishing up so uh yeah you can go back and and listen to the to the read um yeah once it's finished if you just use the link or you can go into the community tab and find it but yeah hey joanne we're just finishing up so tomorrow evening at nine we'll be reading the chapter that art thou and that will be the first chapter and then i think i'll should be able to go live every evening i think just to read the chapters they're a bit shorter and like i say if you've got any questions or want to know anything regarding the the readings the texts the masters or anything i'll be sure to find that out for you and share it at the start of the new stream but for now that's all for this evening lovely to see you all and i hope you enjoyed that introduction and are looking forward to as much as me uh making our way through and journeying through the perennial philosophy uh as put together by orders huxley so guys uh lovely to see you have a great week and like i say i won't have to wait long to see you i hope to be able to see you tomorrow and uh yeah if you can't make it obviously you just come back to the channel and watch it back when you have some time and yeah i think what i'm anyway it's not that important but after the perennial philosophy i'm going to do a few polls i think just to for for the people that enjoy the the children's book so yes good night joanne have a great week and guys i hope to see you tomorrow at nine all right guys take care and i'll see you soon