The Ancient Mystery Teachings Divulged

  

The weekly Sunday lecture at the Philosophical Research Society of Los Angeles was a continuous source of commentary after I began keeping a record of my experiences as chronicled in Testament (1997).  This was a regular activity for me for three years until the winter of 1998.  The variety of orientations presented in the lectures provided me with glimpses of personalities and affiliations among an eclectic variety of speakers and attendees.  Three previous blog articles provide some examples of lecture topics: "The Sacredness of All Things", "Vibrational Healing" and "Mysticism of Eastern Christianity".  In addition to the Sunday lectures, I attended an Egyptian weekday lecture series by Fadel Gad, M.A. for several weeks; a special Saturday evening presentation by trance channel Kevin Ryerson (1, 2); and one of Basil W. R. Jenkins’s lectures on the Gnostic philosophy.  The Society was founded by Manly Palmer Hall (1901-1990), who from a very young age focused on learning and teaching about metaphysical and spiritual aspects of life. 

The essential question one would have about MPH is what manner of personal initiation did he experience to motivate this path.  I'm not aware of any autobiography beyond Manly's 1985 memoir Growing Up with Grandmother.  A 2006 article by Mitch Horowitz (who has been affiliated with the PRS in recent years) offers a concise summary of Manly's early life:
  

Hall was born in Peterborough, Ontario, in 1901 to parents who would shortly divorce, leaving the young Manly in the care of a grandmother who raised him in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  He had little formal schooling.  But there was a spark of some indefinable brilliance in the young man, which his grandmother tried to nurture in trips to museums in Chicago and New York.

Tragedy struck early, when his grandmother died when he was 16.  Afterward, a self-styled Rosicrucian community in California took him in.  At age 19, suspicious of the community’s claims to ancient wisdom, Manly moved on his own to Los Angeles where he began a precocious career in public speaking — first giving an address on reincarnation in a small room above a bank in Santa Monica, and soon rising to the rank of minister at a liberal evangelical congregation called The Church of the People.

Word spread of the boy wonder’s mastery of arcane and metaphysical subject matter.  He attracted benefactors and eventually began travelling the world in search of hidden wisdom.  Yet Hall’s early letters from Japan, Egypt, China, and India are, in many respects, fairly ordinary: They contain little of the eye-opening detail or wonder of discovery that one finds in the writings of other early twentieth-century seekers encountering the East for the first time.  More often they read like prosaic, if somewhat sensitive, linear travelogues of their day.


After publishing his magnum opus, Hall opened a campus in 1934 in the Griffith Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles called The Philosophical Research Society (PRS), where he spent the rest of his life teaching, writing, and amassing a remarkable library of esoterica.

The difficulty posed by Manly's masonic affiliation is that an impression of secrecy could be fostered regarding metaphysical knowledge.  An autobiographical article by MPH entitled "My First Fifty Years" was published in the Autumn 1970 edition of the PRS Journal.  The following paragraphs are some excerpts.

My work has been highly specialized.  It is appreciated by only a small minority of human beings.  For the majority there are immediate personal concerns, and each individual lives from day to day, satisfied to adjust as best he can to the problems of living.


The early Buddhists were much concerned with the mystery of communication.  This was true especially in the early centuries of The Mahayana Doctrine. 


When I started out, I was convinced that enlightened living required a broad basis upon which to build.  It seemed that Plato offered the most satisfactory pattern . . . According to his system, man must first establish the concept of God, determine in his own mind the laws governing the universe, the creation of the world, the place of man in the scheme of things, and the final goal toward which the total creation, including man is inevitably moving.


Aristotle sought to discover the nature of the Divine Cause by measuring and estimating the material world and exploring the laws revealing themselves through the infinite diversity of nature.


Through my studies I came to the decision that creation was the visible manifestation of an invisible creating principle, which can conveniently be termed God.  This creating principle manifests itself through processes called universal laws.


Birth is not a beginning, nor death an end, for both are manifestations of the law of causality.  There is no principle of evil, and the term is applicable only in human affairs.  What we call evil is essentially [conduct derived from] ignorance, which leads to the violation of natural law and ends in suffering or pain.


. . . the heart can experience creation as infinite love flowing from the heart of God.  Having realized this, we reconcile forever the labors of the mind and heart.


It also became obvious that some type of traditional support was necessary to sustain a philosophical interpretation of the divine purpose.  This could be supplied by recourse to the teachings of ancient prophets, sages, and mystics.  As I was not interested in promulgating an original revelation, it was helpful to examine the inspired instruction that had descended to us from the remote past.  It was also encouraging to discover that nearly all the world's religions were based upon the same fundamental teachings.  The various approaches were most useful in appealing to minds of different types and degrees of unfoldment.


By 1928, when I published my large volume on symbolical philosophy, I had laid philosophical footings to the best of my ability.


Very few believers know why they are defending particular doctrines.  Some believe because their parents believed before them.  Others marry into a faith; and some are introduced to a sect by friends or acquaintances.  Most believers are nominal; that is, they agree passively but make no intense effort to understand or apply the beliefs which they have accepted.  There is also a confusion of beliefs, and this has been true especially in the United States.  We have never had a national religion, and have stressed freedom of worship.  Freedom gives us the right to choose our faith, but it does not necessarily follow that we will choose wisely.


How can we explain why a just and loving God permits us to suffer from the actions of other people, over whose conduct we have no control?


Two factors are involved in the mystery of suffering.  The first is karma.


If we settle down quietly to correcting that which can be corrected and accepting with patience and dignity that which cannot be corrected, we conserve a great deal of energy and gain a better outlook toward life and people.


In the midst of the roaring twenties, Freudian psychology swept across the United States.


Psychology formed a hasty partnership with religion and seemed to provide ready explanations for the mysteries of human conduct.


Gradually, academic psychology came to be recognized.  It required many years and considerable labor to convince the public that there was a science of mental health worthy of consideration.  From the beginning, however, I realized that Dr. Freud's beliefs were inconsistent with the basic structure of universal law.  More than thirty years ago I published a talk pointing out that the weakness of psychology was its lack of a solid idealism.


By substituting heredity and environment for causality and karma, psychology unwittingly contributed to the decline of ethics and morality.


It was not until psychology had conditioned the West that Buddhism in general and Zenism in particular  began to be appreciated . . . These are the conditions that I was coping with during the 1930s.


To help those wandering about without any secure guidance, I began teaching the importance of personal and collective experience as the best available means of arriving at reasonable conclusions.


The years of economic depression brought to many the realization that there was something wrong with the wonderful concept of progress which had been gaining momentum since the early years of the nineteenth century.  Troubled individuals reacted according to their levels of insight.  Some were belligerent, others were devising schemes to profit from the widespread misery, and still others were completely discouraged, losing faith in God and man.  Some of those who came to me in search of better insight into the philosophical implications of the depression were convinced that human selfishness had made the financial collapse inevitable.  It seemed to me that if the human being was not supposed to dedicate his physical existence to the accumulation of wealth without regard for honesty then nature must have intended him for a better purpose.  Experience strongly recommended the unfoldment and enrichment of man's inner potential for love, wisdom, friendship, and cooperation.

Between 1940 and 1950 many things happened that were to change the direction of human progress.  World War II came as a terrible disillusionment to those who actually believed that humanity had become wise enough to arbitrate its antagonism.


When atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the age of complacency came to an end.  Man trying to run away from his own technological skill and its products had no place to hide.


We had broken the rules too long.  Instead of cooperating with life, we had formed an unholy partnership with death.  In the desperate effort to gain all, we were in danger of losing everything.  As security could no longer be found in this world, the individual had to make a very important decision.  He must liberate himself from the hypnosis of materialism and restore the idealism which he had cast aside so carelessly.


By the 1960s, many Westerners had begun to take a serious interest in Eastern Philosophy and its meditative disciplines.


I am still convinced that creation is governed and guided by an all-wise, all-good, and all-loving power.


Happiness is a byproduct of personal integrity.

  
The defining characteristics of idealism evidently was inspired by Manly having experienced many fortuitous occurrences in his early life.  He regarded and lamented most forms of popular entertainment as being a pastime prompting "non-factual" thinking.  Since his passing in 1990, provocative perspectives of the subjects of Manly's devotion have been offered through spiritual dispensations of psychic abilities, 'channeling', Instrumental Transcommunication/Electronic Voice Phenomena (incl. 1, 2, 3) and spiritual healing (incl. 1, 2) evincing the ascended realm of existence.  The communicators' experiences beyond the Earth plane allow commentary beyond mortal limitations.  Today as also during Manly's lifetime it seems the majority of the masses don't make time for exploring the annals of transcendental communication or involving themselves as Manly did with "comparative religion and idealistic philosophy."  An example audio recording of his metaphysical oratory is provided below. 
    

 
Manly's 'magnum opus' published when he was 28 years old is The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928).  In 2003 a "reader's edition" was published in a paperback edition.  Some excerpts are provided —

THE WINGED GLOBE OF EGYPT.          FROM MAURICE'S INDIAN ANTIQUITIES.

"This symbol, which appears over the pylons or gates of many Egyptian palaces and temples, is emblematic of the three persons of the Egyptian Trinity.  The wings, the serpents, and the solar orb are the insignia of Ammon, Ra, and Osiris."

  
 
From the chapter "The Ancient Mysteries and the Secret Societies, Part III":
  
Heckethorn sees in the Mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus a metamorphosis of the rites of Isis and Osiris, and there is every reason to believe that all so-called secret schools of the ancient world were branches from one philosophic tree . . .


In contrast to the idea of Hades as a state of darkness below, the gods were said to inhabit the tops of mountains, a well-known example being Mount Olympus, where the twelve deities of the Greek pantheon were said to dwell together.  In his initiatory wanderings the neophyte therefore entered chambers of ever-increasing brilliancy to portray the ascent of the spirit from the lower worlds into the realm of bliss.


From the records available, a number of strange and apparently supernatural phenomena accompanied the rituals.  Many initiates claim to have actually seen the living gods themselves.  Whether this was the result of religious ecstasy or the actual cooperation of invisible powers with the visible priests must remain a mystery.  [not so for blog readers]


Socrates refused to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, for knowing its principles without being a member of the order he realized that membership would seal his tongue.


From the chapter "Wonders of Antiquity":

The worship of Apollo included the establishment and maintenance of places of prophecy by means of which the gods could communicate with mankind and reveal futurity to such as deserved the boon.
  

It is of further interest to note that the Greeks believed the oracle of Delphi to be the umbilicus of the earth, thus proving that they considered the planet an immense human being.
  

It is generally admitted that the effect of the Delphian oracle upon Greek culture was profoundly constructive. 


From the chapter "Mystic Christianity":
  
It is by no means improbable that Jesus Himself originally propounded as allegories the cosmic activities which were later confused with His own life.  That the  Xριστός Christos, represents the solar power reverenced by every nation of antiquity cannot be controverted.  If Jesus revealed the nature and purpose of this solar power under the name and personality of Christos, thereby giving to this abstract power the attributes of a god-man, He but followed a precedent set by all previous World-Teachers.  This god-man, thus endowed with all the qualities of Deity, signifies the latent divinity in every man.
   

Jesus disclosed to His disciples that the lower world is under the control of a great spiritual being which had fashioned it according to the will of the Eternal Father.  The mind of this great angel was both the mind of the world an also the worldly mind.  So that men should not die of worldliness the Eternal Father sent unto creation the eldest and most exalted of His powers — the Divine Mind.  This Divine Mind offered Itself as a living sacrifice and was broken up and eaten by the world.  Having given Its spirit and Its body at a secret and sacred supper to the twelve manners of rational creatures, this Divine Mind became a part of every living thing.  Man was thereby enabled to use this power as a bridge across which he might pass and attain immortality.  He who lifted up his soul to this Divine Mind and served It was righteous and, having attained righteousness, liberated this Divine Mind, which thereupon returned again in glory to Its own divine source.  And because He had brought to them this knowledge, the disciples said to one another: "Lo, He is Himself this Mind personified!"
 

 
From the chapter "The Cross and the Crucifixion":
  
The early Christians used every means possible to conceal the pagan origin of their symbols, doctrines, and rituals.  They either destroyed the sacred books of other peoples among whom they settled, or made them inaccessible to students of comparative philosophy, apparently believing that in this way they could stamp out all record of the pre-Christian origin of their doctrines.  In some cases the writings of various ancient authors were tampered with, passages of a compromising nature being removed or foreign material interpolated.
 

In the papyrus scrolls the Crux Ansata [ankh] is shown issuing from the mouths of Egyptian kings when they pardoned enemies, and it was buried with them to signify the immortality of the soul . . . The Cairo Museum contains a magnificent collection of crosses of many shapes, sizes, and designs, proving that they were a common symbol among the Egyptians.
 

The modern world has been misled in its attitude towards the so-called pagan deities, and has come to view them in a light entirely different from their true characters and meanings.

  
During Manly P. Hall's lifetime, Los Angeles and Hollywood would provide the microcosm for him observing worldly and flamboyant influences upon the sharing of the esoteric spiritual teachings.  While the teachings remain unknown to most people, all knowledge must eventually come to individual souls during the course of eternity.  Today these conditions seem to find expression in abstract ways among Pop culture creations.  (One example is a song performed by Ultravox.)