An Essay on

© 2008 by Academic Services International, Los Lunas, NM, USA

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Acknowledgments

We recognize that the Acknowledgments entry in a work is dedicated to those individuals who have assisted the author in the preparation of his or her manuscript.

But this Essay has been inscribed without the benefit of external assistance, the author having set it down solely based upon his own personal experience. There will be very few references in the text to other magicians and there will be few quotes from famous or obscure initiates. Yet I find that due honor and constructive criticism should be applied to those who have gone before and who have laid the foundations for this present exposition.

Acknowledgments are often brief. Not so here. This is an exposition of masters, teachers and lineages. As I wrote in an earlier book:

"Many were wise, some were nuts. But from you all, I did learn to Tread this Path."

 

Let it be first understood that nobody enters the Path of Initiation into mysticism or magic without first being instructed, or sponsored, or inspired by an already initiated mentor who has previously progressed further along that path. Check it out. Examine the career of any known teacher and you will surely find reference in their history to their own tutor or tutors who preceded them.

Having said that, I must state that I have encountered two Masters who appear to have established their own foundations without the benefit of a teacher who led them through the early stages of their progress. These are Jack Schwarz and Sai Baba. See their stories below.

Here now are the historical Seven Public Chiefs of the Star System lineage:

 

Hidetaka Nishiyama

My first teacher in the esoteric arts was the Karate master, Hidetaka Nishiyama. Sensei Nishiyama was born in 1928 and, as is traditional in Japan, began the study of Kendo at the age of five. In his very early teenage years, he undertook the discipline of Karatedo under Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of the Japanese version of this Okinawan art.

Kendo is the "Way of the Sword." Karatedo is the "Way of the Empty Hand." Sensei means "teacher," "master," or "doctor."

In the later days of the great and terrible World War II, the sixteen-year old Hidetaka found himself waiting in line at an airfield, ready to climb into a Kamikaze aircraft and fly off to meet his doom. But the Americans intervened by dropping a couple of atomic bombs and, at the last minute, Nishiyama was spared an early demise.

Returning to the Karate dojo, he found that almost all of the previous practitioners had died in the war, although the elderly Funakoshi was still alive. Nishiyama continued his training and soon went on to college where he earned his sandan (third degree black belt). This was known as a college sandan and was generally looked down upon by the few remaining high-ranking practitioners as being "insignificant."

In fact, when a college sandan showed up at the main dojo, it was traditional to beat him up rather severely in order to show him that he really didn't know anything at all. There was only one problem here. No one was able to teach Nishiyama a lesson. He was what we might call a "natural" and he remained unbeatable throughout his lifetime.

It came to pass that Nishiyama's father put up the money for the incorporation of the Japan Karate Association (JKA), and it fell to Hidetaka and a few others to remember, refine and rebuild the Karate kata (forms) and movements. During this process, the Japanese adopted and taught a low stance, for the original Okinawa positions were based on a simple and high-standing, upright position. In later years, Nishiyama would come to say, "This was my generation's mistake!" You see, decades-long practice of low stances caused many practitioners to suffer from skeletal problems and the necessity of hip-replacement surgeries has become quite common among them.

Hidetaka was a holy terror in Japan. His training methods were energetic and brutal. He routinely knocked the teeth out of the mouths of arrogant, would-be tough guys. Students and teachers alike had learned to recognize his footsteps when he arrived at a dojo for instruction. Upon hearing his familiar tread on the stairs, they would exclaim, "Oh no! He's coming!"

In the early 1950s, Nishiyama traveled widely with the JKA Demonstration Team when they visited the airbases of the US Strategic Air Command and gave demonstrations. Eventually, in 1962, he was sent to Southern California for six months to establish Karate in The United States and I was one of his first students. At that time, he was godan (fifth degree) and the head of the JKA Instruction Department.

Amazingly, and in opposition to his reign of terror in Japan, he was firm but rather gentle with us Americans - He didn't knock our teeth out! His stay with us of "six months" was a joke. He never intended to return to Japan. He obtained a permanent visa, drove a Thunderbird, had a caucasian girlfriend (a brown belt with whom I routinely sparred), and continued to enjoy the American lifestyle. His English was atrocious and continued to be so all his life.

About two decades ago, he was tested by a medical doctor with an accelerometer. His lightning-fast, front punch clocked in at a speed of 80g (that's eighty times the speed of gravity - go figure it out).

Nishiyama went on to eventually earn kudan (ninth degree) and actually did visit Japan from time to time. One of the lineages that recognized his superior abilities awarded him judan (tenth degree), an honor that he reluctantly accepted. On one visit to Japan, the Emperor himself bestowed specific honors upon him for his service in developing and promoting Japanese martial arts.

I trained with him as recently as 2005, when he was seventy-six years old and still going strong. He recently celebrated his 80th birthday. But you can no longer see him in action at his Los Angeles dojo as "Japan's Living Legend" passed away on November 7, 2008.

What did I learn from Hidetaka Nishiyama? The basic, physical foundations: Coordination, speed, balance, endurance, and the ability to disable or kill with my empty hand. He often proclaimed that the mental aspects of the art were the hardest to teach. The closest he came was one day when we were seated in meditation. He said, "Now see all around you - front, side, back. You not understand, just do it, someday you understand."

 

Isao Takahashi

My second teacher in the esoteric arts was the Aikido and Kendo master, Isao Takahashi. Sensei Takahashi was born in Hawaii in 1917 and undertook the study of Kendo. He was known as the "man with the whipcord reflexes." Takahashi then became a high ranking student of Koichi Tohei, who in turn was the senior disciple of Morihei Uyeshiba, the founder of Aikido.

Aikido is the "Way of Spirit Harmony."

Isao eventually moved to Southern California where he headed the Los Angeles Aikikai and, at that time, was the highest ranking Aikidoist in The United States, and I was one of his students. He was godan (fifth degree). In 1965, he visited Uyeshiba in Japan and earned rokudan (sixth degree).

When I felt that the smooth, effortless techniques of Aikido might not be able to cope with the lightning-fast attacks of Karate, I was bold enough to ask him about this. In classical teaching style, he invited me to punch him. I almost got him, but merely clipped the edge of his eyeglasses, causing them to sit a little crooked on his face. But nevertheless, I ended up lying on the mat. So perhaps I was a bit faster than he had expected. He adjusted his glasses, assessed my speed, looked at me, and said, "Again!"

After that, I no longer grazed his glasses. He repeatedly put me down, saying, "Again! Faster!" After I was completely exhausted, we stopped and he said, "You see?"

He was truly a man of peaceful harmony. I remember walking with him one day across the campus of the University of Southern California where we trained twice a week for five dollars a month. Within his gentle aura I became unusually quiet and blissful, enjoying a quality of competence and harmony that I can today still conjure into being. He died in 1972 and I mourned his passing at the age of fifty-five.

What did I learn from Isao Takahashi? The essence of graceful self-defense and the beginning of the ability to heal with my empty hand.

 

Frater Aquarius

Frater Aquarius was an initiate of the Astrum Argenteum and a student of the famous magician Aleister Crowley. Aquarius' student, Soror Capricornus, was nominally my teacher, but my basic teachings, my link with the Great White Brotherhood, and the transmigration of the essence of adeptship came to me directly from Aquarius. Perhaps we should examine each of these people individually:

First came Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). He wrote the most extensive series of books on magic that have seen the light of day. He made it all very clear to virtually any reader. His basic premise was that one must attain to the knowledge and conversation of his or her own Holy Guardian Angel. Period. He called his system Magick (the old spelling with a k).

It must be noted that Aleister's viewpoint was that everything could (and should) be interpreted in terms of sex. This included his constant reference to the secrets of "sexual magick" that are reminiscent of certain elements of the ancient Taoist philosophy and some of the Hindu practices of Kundalini Yoga. But he also extended this definition even into the realm of chemistry, wherein the lust of oxygen to unite with hydrogen was to be considered a sexual act.

Crowley was an avid anti-Christian, and he boldly slandered some trashy newspaper reporters, comparable to the minions of today's National Explorer [sic], and they responded (for years) by repeatedly labeling him "The Wickedest Man in the World," a title he evidently found to be amusing. So he got a really bad reputation and today moralists everywhere call him a black magician and a Satanist. Alas! All this was said about a man who wrote, "The Devil does not exist."

Upon closer examination, we find that Crowley as an authority on Magick was without peer, but as a human being his personality was very rough indeed. Most of what I learned about the technical details of basic, ceremonial magic came from his texts. Thanks for the info, A.C. - But I'm glad I was born to late to enjoy your wit and wail in person.

Frater Aquarius was born in 1893 and made it through 72 years of life (he died in 1965). I was not born too late to meet this remarkable man in person. Much of what I learned about the practical, operative details of magic and initiation came from his discussions.

In 1962, he initiated Soror Capricornus, and she became my mentor for several years. Eventually I broke my link with her, for she had departed from the path of spiritual enlightenment in order to apply her efforts to the display of outrageous dictatorship and the pursuit of rampant materialism.

 

Jack Schwarz

Jack Schwarz was born in Holland in 1924. At the age of seven, he was able to see auras and demonstrated unusually effective healing abilities. At that time, the Dutch people were still quite superstitious and, as he related it to me, his parents told him, "You've got to stop talking about these things. We can't afford to keep moving! The neighbors would bring me all manner of sick beings, their grandmothers and their rabbits, and I would heal them. But at other times, they would stay as far away from me as possible and regard me with dread."

At the age of fourteen, he discovered his amazing ability to control pain at will, repeatedly demonstrating this by laying on a bed-of-nails and by inserting huge, sail-maker needles through his cheeks and arms.

In 1940, the Nazis invaded Holland. In 1941, at the age of seventeen, Jack joined the Dutch Underground. When he dynamited the local Nazi headquarters, he also eliminated fifty members of the Third Reich. "I don't know what they were so upset about," he told me. "What I did was nothing compared to the atrocities they committed every day!"

In 1943, he was captured and imprisoned in a German Work Camp. Here he was tortured, but during the brutal process he had a spiritual vision that changed his life forever. As soon as his flesh was opened with a cat-o-nine-tails that was embedded with lead balls, the deep gashes immediately closed up again and healed before the eyes of his Nazi interrogators. After repeated attempts to subdue him, the guards, shaking with fear, escorted him back to his cell and, after that, gladly left him alone. It was during this period that he spent most of his time healing other prisoners and learned to sleep two hours per night, and to eat two meals per week, two routines that he continued throughout the rest of his life.

He finally escaped from the hellhole, but was recaptured in 1945 and sent to a concentration camp near Berlin. He escaped again, encountered British troops, and was sent to England just before the end of the war.

Then he was sent to Indonesia for three years to fight for the Dutch army. Just before he left for Indonesia, he was in a motorcycle accident that severely damaged his ankle and he was informed that his foot must be amputated. Jack said, "No way!" and continued to walk and play his instrument in a marching band.

Upon returning to Holland, he sequentially became a naturopathic physician and an actor-director. He performed as a stage-magician at night and continued to publicly lay on the bed-of-nails. He later became a dealer in antiques.

In 1957, Jack and his family immigrated to San Pedro, California. He worked at several different dirty, menial jobs while, at the same time, he performed massage and taught classes in meditation.

In 1962, Regis Philbin stood on top of Jack as he was laying on his bed-of-nails. In 1963, Steve Allen repeated the standing on Jack upon the nails. Steve said that Jack was "The man of tomorrow."

In 1964, Jack devoted his energies full-time to teaching holistic meditation and healing. In response to an inner message, the bed-of-nails demonstration was stopped in 1969 and he performed his final sailmaker's-needle through-the-arm presentation on the Mike Douglas Show in 1975.

Through use of the mind, the "legendary" Jack Schwarz was intimately in contact with the universal mind. He was dedicated to the education of others regarding human energies, health, and awareness. He passed away in 2000 at the age of seventy-six.

What did I learn from Jack Schwarz? How to read the human aura, insight into my cosmic lineage and purpose, and how to access the source of consciousness.

 

Muriel "Isis" Dorner

Muriel Dorner was your average, normal, American housewife with a husband and two daughters. Then someone introduced her to meditation and the works of Alice Bailey. Thereafter, she spent much of her time reading Bailey's books and her husband, outraged as many spouses become when their mate turns to spiritual matters, violently denounced her studies and burned her books.

After that little demonstration, she left her family, moved into a motel, and continued to read Bailey's books. It was during this time that she was contacted by the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul. He physically appeared (materialized) in her room, surrounded by a golden light. He took her hand, and said, "I am-a Djwhala Kul, and I have loved you forever!"

Muriel went on to form her organization, The Lighted Way. She lectured and channeled to the public, and she trained students in channeling, Tarot/numerology, spiritual counseling, and energetic healing techniques.

The Isis in her name derived from her direct connection with the Divine Mother – the ultimate feminine spiritual entity. All of her magical work, and most of her readings/consultations, were done through the Divine Mother connection, although she would also consult with various Masters of the White Brotherhood, including Morya, Kuthumi, Maitreya and Saint Germaine.

Now let it be understood that Muriel was the most powerful, physical plane magician that I ever met. People would come to her with problems. They needed spiritual insight, physical healing, cars, apartments and jobs. She would contact the Divine Mother for manifestation and then instruct the person as to exactly what they should do. Here's one example: A young lady was broke and needed a job. Muriel pulled some (magical) strings and told her to get a job as a pre-school teacher. She was instructed to look in the Yellow Pages under Pre-Schools, to pick three candidates, and to call them up asking for work. She was employed within two days. And this went on and on. I never heard of anyone who failed to get instruction on how to successfully manifest their stated needs.

Muriel Dorner passed away in 2000, four months after my last contact with her. What did I learn from Isis? How to channel and read the aura in the garden of consciousness (the Buddhic plane), plus confirmation of my cosmic identity.

Muriel Isis received her instructions directly from the planetary hierarchy, but she recommended reading the books of Alice A. Bailey (1180-1949). Bailey was associated with the Transhimalayan lineage of the White Brotherhood that previously had included Helena P. Blavatsky and Annie Besant.

In 1919, Alice was meditating in the hills above the Theosophical Society Lodge in Hollywood. There, she was contacted by a Master known as The Tibetan, later to be associated only with the initials D.K., and eventually the name Djwhal Khul. He asked her to write some books that he would dictate, but she adamantly refused. After much initial resistance, she was finally persuaded to write down (channel) a series of telepathically received communications from D.K. She eventually wrote 24 books over a period of thirty 30 years.

However, only a few of her books are actually valuable to the magician. As Jack Schwarz put it, "She decided to fiddle with the messages. She felt the original communications were too difficult for anyone to understand, so she thought she would 'explain' them in greater detail. As a result, with the exception of two books, her writings are totally incomprehensible."

Those two books include her first text, Initiation - Human and Solar, and her last volume, The Rays and the Initiations [Part Two]. Yet, I must say that The Externalization of the Hierarchy and A Treatise on White Magic also contain much valuable information.

People who love Bailey's works tend to discredit Crowley's exposition of the Path. Those who admire Aleister's methodology are likely to disdain Alice's writings. But I am quick to proclaim that both of these authors are in an opposing, yet complimentary, relationship. They represent the yin and the yang streams of the White Brotherhood. Crowley's teachings are by far the more practical, but Bailey introduces concepts and explanations that Aleister never touches upon. If you were to neglect one source in favor of the other, you would indeed be doing yourself a great disservice.

 

Mister White

The Enigmatic Mister White was born in Canada in 1951. He was unusually gifted and, at the age of eight, he was uttering prophecies and describing activities on the other side of buildings (they called it "x-ray vision"). When he grew older, he started writing his own documents and was generally recognized within his group as a full-blown prophet.

In 1984 I was sent some of his writings. They addressed all of the religious and spiritual streams, but were heavily laced with White Brotherhood and Thelemic terminology.

So it came to pass that I wrote a letter to Mr. White, identifying myself and my background, and asking if we could carry on a correspondence. The letter went through a series of initiates to Mr. White. In return, I received an invitation to meet with him on April 9, 1984 somewhere near the eastern seaboard. I later learned that this was extremely unusual - he simply did not grant audiences.

I flew to Denver and met with our small traveling group. We entered a van and drove east for three days to North Carolina. Before we were cleared to our final destination, we underwent three separate screening meetings with eight different people. It had already been determined that Mr. White was the agent of the Avatar of Synthesis (a cosmic being in the Transhimalayan tradition), if not The Avatar himself.

The next morning, after driving for many miles through deep woods, we came to an open valley. And there, about a half-mile to the south, sitting up on a hill, was a magnificent, pre-civil war, plantation mansion. "Will you look at that!" I said. Our guide replied, "That's where we're going!"

We entered the mansion at the appointed hour. This place was majestic - perhaps the finest and most highly-appointed structure that any of us had ever seen. After half an hour, Mr. White drove up in his White Dodge Charger. He was indeed the Rider on the White Horse, a biblical designation and an esoteric title for the Avatar of Synthesis.

Mr. White had dark brown hair and black eyes. He began simply by talking about God and His personal relation to man. He went on to answer questions on all manner of subjects. We asked him why we had traveled 3,000 miles for this meeting. Mr. White replied, "Because I brought you here!" Then, after a couple of hours, the audience was over. We spent a casual afternoon and, when darkness fell, we were served dinner.

Finally, it came time to leave. We were standing in the anteroom next to the front door. Mr. White's penultimate words were, "All we ask you to do is go out and do just what we are doing." I then mentioned something about the Rod of Initiation and Polarization. Mr. White said, "Polarization is like iron and a magnet: Yes, but opposite. Man builds up to God, but I am working downward and am only recently here from the other side." He then reached out and shook hands with me. That's when he did it – He applied the Rod of Initiation and I felt the flow of a tremendously powerful current. This caused a radical alteration of my consciousness and I was never the same again.

It was well understood within his group that he would come into his full power on his thirty-third birthday, and that his first official act would be to meet in council with the representatives of Arcania (the White Brotherhood). His thirty-third birthday was April 8, 1984. We met with him the following day. Of course, at that time, we knew nothing of this agenda. We merely dropped in to say hello, and learned of this esoteric schedule after the fact on April 10, 1984.

 

Sathya Sai Baba

Sathyanarayana Raju was born in 1928 in Southern India. As a child he manifested (materialized) gifts for other children and proclaimed his reincarnation as Sai Baba, a deceased, highly-revered holy man. Thinking that he was possessed by a sorcerer, his parents took him to priests and medical doctors. The doctors ended up applying extensive electro-shock therapy, but nothing was effective in changing his consciousness.

At the age of thirteen, he announced that he was ready to begin his work and left his parents' home to form his own Ashram. This eventually grew into a huge facility with associated educational institutions all over India. And this in spite of the fact that he charged no fees and refused to accept any donations, having "arranged for financing prior to incarnation." He fulfils all of the requirements of the Avatar predicted to appear during the Kali Yuga in the ancient spiritual text, the Mahabharata.

Sai has enjoyed a lifelong career of spiritual teaching, amazing materializations of valuable objects (which he gives to visitors), healing of the ill, raising people after death, and appearing in two places at the same time. He passed away in April, 2011.

I never made the journey, but I did join his Ashram in California where I performed the practices and participated in the rites. One day he actually appeared to me, although at a distance, an occurrence that he says never happens unless he so wills it.

Now it has become common for people to visit him and then return to write and publish books about their mind-blowing experiences, usually accompanied by a gallery of color photographs. There are many of these books available and they are indeed informative to read. But to get to the heart of the matter, one needs to read his biography, Sathyam Shivam Sundaram. Regardless of what various westerners have to say about Oriental philosophy and the practice of Raja Yoga, why not get it from the source?

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