Perennialist books,
essays, stories, and exercises possess intrinsic power to effect
transformation in persons who have attained varying degrees of mental and
spiritual capability. Perennialist teachers make available specially
created material that affects
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in direct ratio to the capabilities they work to attain. The levels
of study correlate directly with the levels of consciousness humans
have achieved. Only about ten
percent of humans have the capacity for study in the Perennial
Tradition.
Study within the Perennial Tradition is not
a magical or automatic process; seekers must fulfill their
responsibility of assiduous and devoted study, contemplation, and
effort. At the same time, the material itself is designed in such a
way as to act on the psyche of the student to engender specific
mental and spiritual enhancement in a natural way.
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Levels of Study in the Perennial
Tradition
 Advanced Study
Introductory Study
Preparatory Study
Progressive Awareness Study
Contact with Perennialist
material |
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This essay explicates the preparatory level of
study of Perennialist material. The individual comes in contact with
purposely developed material through the teacher's books, Website essays,
and activities.
Each level of study presents its own unique
challenges to the seeker.
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The preparatory study program involves initially
reading and studying all six of the books listed on the left.
After discovering the Perennial Tradition
and its accompanying study material, the individual must choose
between two courses of action:
- Approaching the material as ordinary information: "Picking up
scraps of jumbled information like a dog scavenging in a
refuse
pit" 1
- Approaching the material as Higher Knowledge: recognizing that
"the transmission of the message is not a right but a privilege
granted to those who merit it" 2
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| "He who wants knowledge
must himself make the initial efforts to find the source of
knowledge and to approach it, taking advantage of the help and
indications which are given to all, but which people, as a rule, do
not want to see or recognize. Knowledge cannot come to people
without effort on their own part. They understand this very well in
connection with ordinary knowledge, but in the case of great
knowledge, when they admit the possibility of its existence, they
find it possible to expect something different." 3
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In the preparatory phase of study, Perennialist
material is the "teacher." It is only appropriate and effective for a
person to work with a  Perennialist teacher when they've succeeded in the effort to
achieve the first essential break-through into preliminary awareness and
power. They must have learned that the "curative effect" of Perennialist
material is not automatic, so it does no good to "wait" for it inactively.
They will have come to the awareness that Perennialist material possesses
an esoteric kind of "medicine" that requires that the person "sense" the
curative effect for it to take place, becoming fully conscious of the
catalyst that activates the entire process. They must have worked
assiduously to gain an understanding of how to discern the "curative
effect."
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Nothing for Man Except What He Has Earned
The superior experience and knowledge will be made available to
a man or woman in exact accordance with his capacity and earning of
it. Hence, if a donkey sees a melon he will eat its rind; ants will
eat whatever they can get hold of; man will consume without knowing
that he has consumed.
Our objective is to achieve, by the understanding of the Origin,
the Knowledge which comes through experience.
This is done, as with a journey, only with those who already
know the Way.
The justice of this state is the greatest justice of all;
because, while this knowledge cannot be withheld from him who
deserves it, it cannot be given to him who does not deserve it.
It is the only substance with a discriminating faculty of its
own, inherent justice.
Yusuf Hamadani, Perennialist
Teacher
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The objectives of preparatory study in the Perennial
Tradition include:
- Psychological, emotional, and intellectual stability:
- Having overcome egomania in all its manifestations and being in
effective control of one's debilitating self
- Having overcome the effect of past negative experiences to the
point of no longer being excessively afraid of personal rejection,
attaining sufficient courage to face criticism and move into new,
unfamiliar areas of thought and experience
- Life stability: having one's occupational, interpersonal, and
financial circumstances under personal control to the point that one
would be easily able to relocate to another area if he were successful
in the preparatory phase of study and became qualified for introductory
study involving direct instruction with a Perennialist teacher
"In Pythagoras' school at
Crotona, the pupils passed through a series of three grades, and were
not allowed personal contact with Pythagoras himself until they
reached the highest or third grade."
Paul Brunton, Notebooks
- Experience of definite, discernible epiphanies 4
which give you clear evidence of the dynamic force contained within the
material. These epiphanies would have to have produced definite
incipient intellectual, emotional, and spiritual transformations in you:
you would now be able to demonstrate that you can think and act
in an augmented, effectual, exceptional manner
- The definite conviction that being a part of the Work of the
Perennial Tradition is the only desirable life pattern for you. Your
attachments to family, friends, habits, and past life-patterns would
have to have become secondary to participation in Perennialist Work,
including becoming involved in the Perennialist commonwealth enterprise.
| "Esoteric
knowledge can be given only to those who seek, only to those who
have been seeking it with a certain amount of consciousness, that
is, with an understanding of how it differs from ordinary knowledge
and how it can be found. This preliminary knowledge can be gained by
ordinary means, from existing and known literature, easily
accessible to all. And the acquisition of this preliminary knowledge
may be regarded as the first test. Only those who pass this first
test, those, that is, who acquire the necessary knowledge from the
material accessible to all, may hope to take the next step, at which
point direct individual help will be accorded them." 5 |
- The major focal point of
your consciousness should become the study of preparatory Perennialist
material, your activities constantly directed toward
self-transformation, the overcoming of oppressive forces in the world,
and assisting others in their spiritual ascent. You would need to have
searched for and explored any other programs of study that seem viable
to you and worked in those systems to determine if one of these is more
suitable to you than the Perennial Tradition.
- Being able to experience inspiration through opening to Higher
Intelligence, evidenced through the production of new, creative ideas and
processes 6
| "A
man may hope to approach esotericism if he has acquired a right
understanding from ordinary knowledge, that is, if he can find his
way through the labyrinth of contradictory systems, theories and
hypotheses, and understanding their general meaning and general
significance. This test is something like a competitive examination
open to the whole human race, and the idea of a competitive
examination alone explains why the esoteric circle appears reluctant
to help humanity. It is not reluctant. All that is possible is done
to help men, but men will not or cannot make the necessary efforts
themselves. And they cannot be helped by force." 7 |
 Students in the preparatory phase of
Perennialist study must make psychic contact with Perennialist teachers
through the material the teachers have created. Seekers must comprehend
that persons who have developed the transformative material and its
accompanying procedures on which the study program is based demonstrate
the power and effectiveness of the higher knowledge it enables by having
produced and continuing to produce material through inspiration and by
applying its transformative procedures in their own self-work.
Much of the effort during the preparatory phase
must be in clearing away mental, moral, and intellectual obstructions that
hold you back and make spiritual progress impossible. In the terms of
Clement of Alexandria, one of the main focal points in this phase is
"healing."
| "Health and knowledge
are not the same; one is a result of study, the other of healing. In
fact, if a person is sick, he cannot master any of the things taught
him until he is first completely cured. We give instruction to
someone who is sick for an entirely different reason than we do to
someone who is learning; the latter, we instruct that he may acquire
knowledge, the first, that he may regain health. Just as our body
needs a physician when it is sick, so, too, when we are weak, our
soul needs the Educator to cure its ills. Only then does it need the
Teacher to guide it and develop its capacity to know, once it is
made pure and capable of retaining the revelation of the Word.
Therefore, the all-loving Word, anxious to perfect us in a way that
leads progressively to salvation, makes effective use of an order
well adapted to our development; at first, He persuades, then He
educates, and after all this He teaches."
Clement of
Alexandria |
The preparatory phase of the program of study is in essence
"healing" in Clement's terms, since most persons must regenerate their
psychological and moral essence, restore their awareness of themselves and
the world, and remedy the disuse of forgotten mental and spiritual
faculties, reawakening those capabilities and powers that have lapsed from
their consciousness.
The preparatory phase assists students to open
both their mind and their soul to the Perennialist teachings so that later
they will be able to open themselves to a teacher if that becomes
possible.
 "The cure of the part should not be
attempted without the cure of the whole. No attempt should be made
to cure the body without the soul and if the mind and the body are
to be healthy, you must begin by curing the mind. That is the first
thing. Let no one persuade you to cure the mind until he has first
given you his soul to be cured."
Plato, The
Commonwealth |
Perennialist material has a "security safeguard,"
a means of making it impossible for unprepared and unsuitable persons to
understand or benefit from it--sometimes by diverting them to the kind of
nonsense they enjoy. To illustrate: ordinary minds will easily dismiss
this entire essay, feeling relieved that they're intelligent enough to
have "seen through" a transparent effort to fool them into thinking
there's something extraordinary in Perennialist material, when it's
evident from a cursory perusal of the books and essays that they contain
nothing more than ordinary ideas and exercises--nothing magic.
"If a man insists on
asking for the attentions of a personal teacher before he is
sufficiently prepared to benefit by them, then his rash importunity will
be punished. For he will find a false teacher, a guide to untruth and
darkness rather than to reality and light. Enough work should have been
done on himself and by himself in mental and emotional discipline, in
moral striving, in intellectual preparation, and in meditational
practice to justify his request for instruction. Otherwise he may be
really actuated by egoistic ambitions which are secretly hiding beneath
his spiritual aspirations, or he may be too unbalanced emotionally to
accept in his heart the serene impersonal wisdom even when it is
proffered him."
Paul Brunton, Notebooks
At every level of study, Perennialist teaching material
contains inner screening processes that weed out persons who would be
unfit for any aspect of Perennialist study. Those who make it through this
screening process and persist in their studies learn to approach
Perennialist preparatory material with the necessary interest and respect.
Only by learning to make the appropriate and correct approach to
Perennialist material do seekers discover what is truly contained in
it.
"A divinity may
approach  you: it is either everything or nothing.
Nothing, if you meet it in the frame of mind with which you confront
everyday matters; everything, if you are prepared and attuned to the
meeting. What the divinity is in itself is a matter that does not
affect you; the important point for you is whether it leaves you as
it found you or makes a different man of you. But this depends
entirely on yourself. What is brought to you depends upon the
reception you prepare for it. You must have been prepared by the
education and development of the most intimate forces of your
personality so that what the divine is able to evoke may be kindled
and released in you. Everything depends upon the way in which you
receive what is offered you."
Rudolf Steiner, Christianity As Mystical Fact,
1947 |
If you believe that you've studied
Perennialist Tradition material effectively and have achieved the
objectives outlined above, if you wish to inquire about the possibility of
introductory study, read
the cooperative commonwealth community material and then complete the
screening and testing process connected with the CCC enterprise, which
will include contact with the Director of Study.
| "'Go, my friend, seek
your goal by sifting the pure from the false and seize hold of that
which has survived the centuries and emerged progressive and intact,
not as a hoary belief to be venerated but as a positive path of
action and reaction. This path does exist, it exists everywhere and
in every age, yet it hides itself from the unready, the
sensation-seekers and the self-indulgent. It is a hard path and one
of total commitment and absolute discipline. Its reward is
extinction.'" 8
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Notes:
1
Rafael Lefort, The Teachers of Gurdjieff
2 Ibid.
3 P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the
Miraculous
4 The defining characteristics of Perennialist
study material are psychic upheaval and epiphany: the disruption of the
psyche and the production of a higher state of consciousness. The
meaning of "epiphany" has expanded beyond its Greek origins - the
manifestation of a god - to include special and sudden raptures. An
epiphany is an episodic mystical experience. In this embodiment of the
Perennial Tradition, a serious student experiences epiphanies while
engaging in specific exercises, especially dialectical interchange.
5 P.D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way
6 The capability of creating new, original ideas
and processes is demonstrated (or not) through, among other means,
participation with a Perennialist teacher in dialectical interchange,
when the seeker has passed beyond the preparatory phase to the
introductory stage. The word "new" is emphasized because some persons
can work artistically in structuring other people's ideas in innovative
ways, but this does not involve their creating their own, original ideas
through inspiration.
7 P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the
Universe
8 Rafael Lefort, The Teachers of
Gurdjieff
Reference:
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