The Ageless Wisdom Teaching
The Ageless Wisdom Teaching, by Benjamin Creme - A book review by Carmen Font  Many travel the world looking for answers, others follow a path of religious instruction in search of enlightenment, and some delve into an arduous study of philosophies in the pursuit of knowledge. Any visit to a library or bookshop opens up myriad possibilities for the occasional onlooker or the serious researcher. Where is truth about life to be found? Is there any such thing as truth? And what is life, for that matter?  It surely has to be a difficult subject. That is why we prefer that a third party (a religious group, a political ideology) provides us with some hints and rules about it.   No, no, wait a minute. We are grown-ups living in the twenty-first century; we no longer need any religious or political ideology to rule our mind because historically these have proved to be problematic. We are atheist, for God's sake, and we believe in the incommensurable power of science or the language of art. We are staunch supporters of the most noble ethical values devoid of political prejudice, and commit ourselves to social work, since there are so many people in the world in need. So we apply ourselves to our own understanding of oneself with the help of our sophisticated intelligence, our knowledge about the world, and the strength of our emotions. We strive to do our best and be respectable citizens. But we still lack answers. Well, we have them, but there seems to be a different bunch of answers here and there, and thus we become tolerant in the best of cases because there is not much one can do to impose one concept of life on others, except writing a book, giving lectures, or starting a revolution. Imposing oneself in any case is outdated and only zealots do it. We have to make the best of what we have and try to make sense of it. Still, sometimes, it looks as if life is all about living, and that all of those philosophies  -  western and eastern  -  forms of art, political systems, religious communities, scientific inquiries and social endeavours hide some glimpse of the whole picture. They contain some truth. They are built on the same foundation. Yes, life does have a meaning.   The Meaning of Life  It does, indeed. And the meaning has always been there, albeit hidden from the public eye. It has taken a gradual process of understanding on the part of humanity to make this meaning more accessible to an ever larger group of people. Before knowledge can transform itself into wisdom through the practice of love and the conscious experience of living, it has to be grasped. For the sake of our own integrity, we cannot receive more than we can apprehend. This meaning of life is The Ageless Wisdom Teaching.  The most important truths are often expressed in simple terms, without unnecessary ornament or mental disquisition. They are deep and overarching. Benjamin Creme presents these truths in a long, ground-breaking interview with journalist Rollin Olson about the basic tenets of the Ageless Wisdom Teaching. So much and such important esoteric information has never been revealed in quite this way before, in booklet form. Creme begins by defining the synthesizing nature of these Teachings which are, in a nutshell, a succinct compendium of humanity's spiritual legacy: "The Ageless Wisdom Teaching, or esotericism as it is often called, is not a religion. It is not, strictly speaking, a philosophy; it is not an art or a science, but it has something of all of these. You might say that esotericism is the philosophy, or the science, of the evolutionary process" (p.7). One may wonder about the intricacy of this evolutionary process. Does it entail evolving from apes to men, from uncivilized peoples to learned communities? No, evolution here refers to the growth in consciousness, not to the evolution of physical form, both for humans and for lesser kingdoms such as the mineral, the vegetable and the animal. Our evolving planet Earth and its inhabitants rely on this Ageless Wisdom Teaching, this esoteric understanding that has been 'occult' (hidden) for many centuries. It has slowly but surely come to the fore thanks to the pioneering work of disciples such as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Helena Roerich and Alice A. Bailey during the late 19th century and well into the early 20th century. Now, with the imminent appearance of Maitreya and the fully fledged inauguration of the Age of Aquarius, humanity is in need of a deep understanding and awareness of these ageless teachings of wisdom. Benjamin Creme tells us that these are as old as humanity itself. "This is the teaching of a group of men who have gone beyond the strictly human stage and have entered the next kingdom, the Spiritual Kingdom. They are the Masters of Wisdom and the Lords of Compassion. They are men and women like us who have expanded their consciousness to include the spiritual levels" (p.8). In short, the wisdom of The Ageless Wisdom Teaching lays out the reasons why humanity is on planet Earth, what our purpose is here, and the actual process of growing in conscious awareness and, as a result, in happiness. "As a race, our purpose is to spiritualize matter. We are spirit in matter, in incarnation at this relatively low level (although from the mineral, the vegetable or the animal point of view it is a relatively high level) - The evolutionary process, therefore, is one by which we spiritualize the matter of our own bodies and, thus, matter itself" (p.6). We achieve this by informing "the matter of our physical, emotional, and mental bodies with the qualities of the soul, which is perfect" (p.6). Benjamin Creme does not make any shortcuts in explaining the mystery of life while inviting us to participate in it. And there is nothing more mysterious and intriguing than the nature of God. "God, in esoteric meaning, is the sum total of all the Laws and all the energies governed by these Laws in the manifested and the unmanifested universe. So God is impersonal. Nevertheless, that transcendent God is manifest in every aspect of creation, including ourselves. We are not separate from that creation  -  from God" (p.10). God is also the great Cosmic Being Who ensouls this planet. The only difference between the Masters and us is that They are God-realised and bring their consciousness into complete "at-onement" with Themselves. We are still engaged in this process, and for this reason the Ageless Wisdom Teaching aims at opening our eyes and awareness to the different laws governing our constitution.   The Alphabet of Life  Despite the fact that we do not control the laws that bring us into incarnation in the first place, and neither do we have any say in the nature and the degree of karmic load to resolve in a particular life (these are the realms of the Great Lords of Karma), we can make good use of the energies and karmic circumstances given at the present time. For this reason, The Ageless Wisdom Teaching devotes a section on defining the qualities and the interactions of the Seven Rays (p.13), as well as the functioning of the Law of Cause and Effect (p.22). The process of rebirth is the mechanism that allows our evolution of consciousness, and, as Benjamin Creme explains, groups of souls are brought into incarnation through the two great laws, the Law of Rebirth and the Law of Cause and Effect. "The dominating law is the Law of Cause and Effect, and scientifically, you can say that it is the Law of Action and Reaction, which are opposite and equal" (p.16-17). This means that "every thought, every action that we have, under this law, sets in motion a cause" (p.17). This is how we make a living  -  obviously not in a monetary sense  -  if not a fortune. Humans had been led to believe that one is born "fortunate" or not, and that we are ruled (or not ruled) by destiny. Fate and destiny exist to a certain extent, in the sense that these are the result of our karmic heritage and the decisions that our soul makes before incarnating. The ABC of life is a sound combination of predestination and free-will. We are born free to choose our modes of living according to our given experience and wise understanding. No one is born or predestined to die of starvation or to lead a life of abuse. We are born with a set of predestined circumstances and the promise that life can and will be a fulfilling one if we apply ourselves to choosing wisely within any given scenario. The chapter 'Evolution and Initiation' (p.30) describes this process. The Ageless Wisdom Teachings help us to understand our make-up, our relationship with Hierarchy and the interaction between these two. We are meant to be the best version of ourselves, for the sake of others, at any given time.   This is, in short, true spirituality. In order to practise it, "Maitreya says to cultivate three things: honesty of mind, sincerity of spirit and detachment" (p.47). Readers of Maitreya's teachings are already familiar with the rudiments of this practice, but for newcomers they serve as a useful tool and a revelation. In any case, the regular reader is inspired by revisiting these truths presented so powerfully. "We have to understand that the word 'spiritual' means the active betterment of life for all people - Spiritual is anything which brings a man or woman to a higher state of life" (p.46).   We would not do justice to this monograph by considering it only a 'tool' for beginners, to distribute in fairs and lectures, although it is indeed an invaluable work to introduce esoteric wisdom to newcomers. It contains information already included in longer books by Benjamin Creme. But nowhere else can you find the same powerful impact of truth, so fluently written, in so little space. Creme spares no effort in presenting the small and the bigger picture: the origin of man as a metaphor and its symbolic representation in the story of Adam and Eve (p.43), the meaning of the Christ and the Antichrist (p.38 & 41), a review of the fundamental events in Maitreya's emergence (p.51), the Prayer for the New Age (p.57), and a useful glossary of esoteric terms (p.59).  Even for the long-time student of esoteric writings and the books of Benjamin Creme, The Ageless Wisdom Teaching stands...