Since the dawn of time, the exhortation by sages of all ages and cultures to know ourselves, and thereby to know humanity and the world of which we are a part, is, of course, a perennial entreaty. It would be presumptuous indeed to...
moreSince the dawn of time, the exhortation by sages of all ages and cultures to know ourselves, and thereby to know humanity and the world of which we are a part, is, of course, a perennial entreaty. It would be presumptuous indeed to profess to have found the ultimate dictum. However, we may claim in this work to have advanced a few small footsteps towards this supreme, but never-ending quest of Self-enquiry. But what is meant by the disarmingly simple injunction, ‘Know Thyself ’? Does it refer merely to our body, which obviously assumes that we are just our body and nothing else? Or does the totality of our being comprise our physical body as well as subtle bodies on higher levels than the physical—giving us form and expression at those levels—all subsumed under the guidance of an overarching master principle? This master principle, we aver, is none other than Consciousness. In this work then, we deal with the unfolding of Consciousness—the primary principle of all existence—and its expression through various bodies, subtle and material, on all planes of being from the divine and spiritual to the material and physical. Our scope of enquiry and terms of reference will embrace the universal, ageless wisdom and the corroboration of some of its tenets by modern science.
It is important to understand what is meant by the universal, ageless wisdom. This wisdom is known under a variety of terms, all conveying the essential meaning of eternal truth. This corpus of wisdom addresses the oneness of all life, and the intrinsic divinity of all that exists—it is the root of all religions, sciences, and philosophies that have burgeoned like magnificent fruits from the branches emanating from the central trunk of the Tree of Wisdom. As the term implies, it is the unbounded wisdom of all ages and all times; it can be discerned in the doctrines of the East and the West, from antiquity to the present. Amongst the many appellations given to this universal wisdom through the ages we cite: philosophia perennis, the phrase coined by the German philosopher, mathematician, historian, and inventor Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz FRS (1646–1716), then adopted as the Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), the novelist and philosopher nominated nine times for the Nobel Prize in Literature;2 the religio perennis by the Swiss philosopher and metaphysicist, Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998); the Ancient Wisdom (‘ancient’ in the sense of being eternal, or ageless, not obsolete); the Eternal Wisdom; theosophia, or theosophy; the Mystery Teachings; Gupta-Vidyā, the Sanskrit term meaning Divine Wisdom; and prisca sapientia, the Latin term for sacred wisdom used by one of the Royal Society’s most illustrious presidents, Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1726, Julian calendar), in reference to this accumulated store of ancient wisdom. Rudiments of the ageless wisdom (another common term) may be found scattered among the folklore of aboriginals and so-called primitive peoples in every region of the globe; moreover, it informs the core teaching of the world religions and consti- tutes the matrix of the laws of science as we shall see.
