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 mystics and there will be very few quotes from famous or obscure meditators. Yet I find that honor is due to those who have gone before and who have laid the foundations for this present essay.
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.
Patanjali
Patanjali, the great expounder of Yoga, appears to have been incarnated in India sometime between 500 BC and 200 BC. The life of Patanjali is a mystery for contemporary historians, and virtually no facts are available that relate to this Master who set forth the basic principles of Yoga. It is only through the medium of legends that we can catch a glimpse of him.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali apparently dates from around 200 BC. Patanjali has often been called the "Founder of Yoga" because of this work, although in reality he is actually a lesser figure.
The Yoga Sutras, as a treatise on Yoga, is a major work among the great Hindu scriptures and serves as the basis of the system known as Raja Yoga.
He was evidently an original thinker, not just a compiler of the yoga wisdom known during his time. As such, he reinterpreted and explained what others had said, and resolved any contradictions. His superior elucidations resolved many lines of disagreement in the yoga philosophy. He thus inspired a lineage of teachers and practitioners that persists up to today.
Some translators seem to make him a boring techniciam of the yoga philosophy, but others show him as a benevolent spiritual guide and a friend with a sense of humor.
He is regarded as one of the primary initiators into the science of uniting one's consciousness with the primordial consciousness that we know as Yoga.
Jack Schwarz
Jack Schwarz was born in Holland in 1924. 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.
He spent most of his life sleeping only two hours per night and eating two meals per week.
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 1963, Steve Allen stood on top of Jack as he was laying on his bed-of-nails. Steve said that Jack was "The man of tomorrow."
In 1964, Jack devoted his energies full-time to teaching holistic meditation and healing. 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.
< Link to the Aletheia Foundation of Jack Schwarz
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.
Muriel went on to form The Lighted Way. She lectured and channeled to the public, and she trained students in meditation, channeling, spiritual counseling, and energetic healing techniques.
Muriel was also 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. 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
Frater Perdurabo
One expounder of Patangali's work was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), whose esoteric motto was Perdurabo ("I will endure unto the end").
He wrote two revealing texts on Yoga that made it all very clear, even to the densest of readers.
These were Book Four - Part One (Meditation), and Eight Lectures on Yoga, both of which are available today and can even be downloaded from the internet for free.
Alice A. Bailey
Alice Bailey (1180-1949). Bailey was associated with the Transhimalayan lineage of the White Brotherhood that previously had been represented by 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 mystic. 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.
These works contain a tremendous amount of information on the spiritual path, especially in relation to the inner, meditative practices and processes. Particularly interesting is the concept of "the path" being an actual pathway of light between the heart chakra and the crown chakra that is built through meditation.
The eminent psychologist, Karl G. Jung, reviewed the works of Alice Bailey and said that were were truly remarkable, but that they probably were dictated by her own "higher self" and not by a Tibetan master.
To which Alice replied, "Perhaps Dr. Jung can explain how my "higher self" sends me packages of incense from India!"
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 both these authors are in an opposing, yet complimentary, relationship. They represent the yin and the yang streams of the White Brotherhood.
Sathya Sai Baba
Sathyanarayana Raju was born in 1928 in Southern India. As a child he manifested (materialized) gifts for other children and proclaimed he was the reincarnation of Sai Baba Shirdi, 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.
His many lectures on meditation explain the practice of Raja Yoga.
Adi Da
Adi Da Samraj, the guru of a thousand names, was born on November 3, 1939 in New York as "Franklin Jones."
His early work is particularly notable for the introduction of two concepts: "The closed fist" and "Slapping the guru."
The Closed Fist is his symbol for illustrating the contraction of the human energy field (aura) that he observed taking place when a person is interacting with another person.
I have also noted this phenomenon, but my observation includes a contraction of the aura whenever a person is dealing with any type of problem. The energy field contracts in order to make it "more dense" and thus more focused and more efficient on the dense physical plane.
This is, of course, the opposite of what is seen when one is in a state of expanded consciousness.
Slapping the Guru is his metaphor for leaving a teacher. It does not imply that the student assaults his guru, but rather "slaps him on the back," as if to say "Thanks teacher! I learned a lot from you, but I'll be moving on now!"
This scenario often presents a problem for the student, for many teachers indicate that the guru-student relationship is sacred, eternal, and cannot be broken.
On the other hand, many gurus think nothing of throwing a recalcitrant student out of their ashram!
It is said: "In the midst of this dark and bewildering epoch, the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da Samraj, has come to this human world to establish a unique Spiritual life and culture that is not based on mythology.
"Adidam does not require your belief. Adidam is not a conventional religion. Adidam is a "reality consideration" at every level of experience."
Today, Adi Da is one of the more controversial guru figures. His sometimes strange behaviour, controversial workshops, claim to being an avatar, and frequent change of name are due to the fact that the experience of the dissolution of ego-boundaries and the experience of the primordial reality is so overwhelming to the finite vehicle that complete identification with the totality of the Godhead is often the result.
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