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control of the ability to do so. With training, he changes from a man whose map is
created by external conditions into a man whose reality map is changed by his own
will. When that will is free of conditioning, when the map in his head no longer
controlled by physical cercumstance, but it is controlled by the inner Will. He is
empowered to create his own beliefs, symbols, and maps--and correspondingly to
create his own reality!
I have mentioned above that the ability to symbolize is almost always active. So if
it is, then what are we doing with it now, right at this moment? Look at people
around you. Look at the local government, the news, TV commercials, and
coworkers. Look at yourself. Do you like what we are collectively creating? Do the
people around you enjoy the world in which they are participating? Another
question: If our own faculties are constantly at work in our lives creating an overall
unhappy scheme, who is in control of those faculties? Who is running the show? It
is like a runaway phenomena, the reigns of which are dangling. It is a power
unharnessed, undirected by the one who is gifted with it. We are left at the whim of
undirected forces whirling in the ebb and flow of nature.
Science
With the advent of science, and the scientific method, the world was introduced
full-force to the essence of Hermeticism. The scientific method involves
formulating explanations of how things happen--mirrors of reality--testing them
thoroughly, and then adjusting or discarding them based on the evidence. In other
words, it acknowledges that we all have versions of reality up and running in our
minds, but it mandates that we test and adjust them to be more accurate and to get
them to yield desirable results. Imagine turning this amazing discipline toward the
goal of happiness and spiritual attainment. That is the Hermetic path.
It is not surprising that our world today barely at all uses the scientific method for
spiritual pursuits. It is usually instead geared toward just the physical life, toward
creating utopia exclusively on Earth. This world is full of luxury and conveniences
that modern technology have provided. We try to enjoy these fruits of science, but
there is always something nagging us from within. The real issues are continuously
unaddressed. The resulting uneasiness is the result of trying to escape from
problems by avoiding them or suppressing them--by fixing the outsides of things
rather than dealing with the behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and complexes that create
them. Just look at Western medicine. It speaks almost completely in terms of the
suppression of symptoms, discomfort and suffering. Anti-depressants, anti-
histamines, anti-inflammatory, anti-etc..
The downfall of science as it is currently practiced is that it almost never uses its
discipline to delve deeply into how ailments emerge. It tends to ignore how we
create our reality with our beliefs and corresponding behaviors. What good does it
do you to combat physical suffering if, at the same time, you are still creating it?
Worse yet, the very things that need science applied to them--beliefs, complexes,
and behaviors--are the very things that are in charge of scientific pursuits. Not
surprisingly, the world is filled with high tech weapons and drugs that numb us to
reality. What we do with modern science pales in significance to what the original
inventors of the scientific method intended for it. We put it in the service of desires
and needs which do not produce a desirable reality. In other words, the world we
are creating today with science is largely created by our own demons. When you
do not take ownership of your ability to create your own version of reality, that
ability fall into that hands of psychological complexes. Fear and desire are still the
strongest motives for research and progress.
As individuals, it is up to each one of us to break this chain. Before we use our
Hermetic abilities to create a "comfortable" life for ourselves here on the physical,
we must first use it to weed out those things in our own personal programming that
are blindly causing us suffering. If we cannot do this, then the awesome power of
science falls into the hands of our blind, infantile subconscious complexes.
The first step then is to find a system of symbols which encompasses and explains
our demons and how they arise. That way, they can be dealt with. There are many
such schemes of the cosmos. The Golden Dawn, for instance, uses the Kabbalah
and the Tree of Life as a map of the interior make-up of man. The Glyph of the
Tree charts the recesses of his body, mind, and spirit supposedly all the way to the
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