Introduction to the Path

INTRODUCTION TO THE SITE

“THE PATH OF LIBERATION” has never been accurately written down. It has not only never been accurately written down, it has simply never been written down at all, except for isolated, wrong snatches of it that had been corrupted by transmission by word of mouth over centuries, like the whisper around a circle party game, where everything first whispered comes back completely corrupted and changed to the originator of the whisper. Concepts like chakras, meditation, breathing, and such as commonly understood are all wrong, and the understanding of what they are is completely corrupted in all their current usage.

The only part of the real path that I know of in accurate form is “The Secret of the Golden Flower”, an ancient Chinese text brought back from China during the 1930s by Richard Wilhelm, who also brought back the text of the “I Ching”. “The Secret of the Golden Flower” describes the very beginning of the Path, which happens to be meditation. It describes the whole progress of meditation from its beginnings until it reaches the next stage of the path, at which moment the text ends. That next step of the Path, which we call “The Mill Wheel,” is the stage of the Path in which passive smoothing and calming of the breath is replaced by the first exercise of any active influence on the breathing, while still leaving the breathing mechanism to function correctly on its own to keep the body alive and healthy when the consciousness cannot concentrate on it. The author took 40 years to get to that still early step on the path. He evidently did not get any further. But he does describe all stages of meditation and, quite amazingly, even describes and explains the visionary images from God that everyone doing it correctly experiences along the way. His book, however, is written almost completely as descriptions of things rather than as clear, specific directions how to do them. And the book is written in the symbolic, analogy-ridden manner and language of a differently oriented civilization that modern readers cannot understand, let alone fully comprehend, unless they were doing the Path. If so, they could, with some difficulty, recognize when the author is fancifully describing very specific things that they have done and very specific signs of God that they also experience at the same stages of meditation that the author describes. That modern man would have difficulty understanding and comprehending the imagery and manner of writing of this time period is proved by the fact that Carl Jung wrote a introduction/preface to the publication of the text and absolutely did not comprehend a single thing of the text….which is one of the great ironies, even satires, of the last century.

In the past eras of rulers, despotic and otherwise, who needed to keep order and control among mostly irrational, poorly educated, disadvantaged flocks of constituents, things real that had to do with God and religious disciplines were often suppressed, outlawed, persecuted and in no way tolerated. Keepers of the real insights were usually called such things as “keepers of the mysteries”, were secretive, and kept the original insights alive and carefully protected in secretive societies, in which no one was allowed even close to the real insights and teachings until they had passed many initiations and trials that proved their dependability and lack of any possible intolerance or bad will towards concepts that differed from and even contradicted known revered concepts in the world.

During the early 1800s, uneasy European despots began outlawing all such societies and all mystical disciples, even that of astrology which, until then, was even taught in the great universities of Europe. The last lecture on astrology in Europe took place in the University of Erlangen about the time of Goethe’s death in 1832. From then until the turn of the last century, all such disciplines, including the Path were completely underground and secretive. At the beginning of the last century, there was a resurgence in interest in things mystical, such as astrology and the Path, and a resurgence of seeking to find religious truths.

With the advent of our free societies and freedom of speech, at least in the US and Europe and other highly civilized modern countries, and the new freedom to write and say whatever one pleases, it seems to have become safe enough to write The Path. And modern computers and the Internet have made it easier and more rational a process to do so.

Therefore, as someone who had the good fortune to be able to find the real Path and also be able to use modern conveniences, music recordings, and ease of life to get through the Path while still reasonably young, I have decided that, at 70 years of age, it is time to begin publishing the Path of Liberation. How far I will go, I do not know as yet. I will certainly go as far as the author of “The Secret of the Golden Flower” has gone, and possibly through all the many, many stages of the Path.

But I must caution: the Path is long and consists of very many stages, each of which has to be mastered completely before going on to the next, because each step/stage builds on that which was mastered and made habit in the previous step. Therefore, the fact that someone writes the Path in no way means that anyone reading the text will be able to successfully do the Path. It has been my experience, and that of the ages, that no one can do the Path by merely following instructions. One always bashes up against the hindrances of one’s own previously established habits, predilections, misunderstandings, fears, prejudices, likes and dislikes and more, any and all of which keep one from understanding the realities of how things actually work and doing many things that are necessary, while one’s own lacks of awareness of oneself keep one from noticing wrong ways one does even things one understands in each new stage of the Path. Therefore God made the Path from the beginning so that a teacher or GURU is necessary in order to get through the Path. And that teacher must have, himself, gotten through the Path to its end, or he/she will not be able to effectively teach it.

Therefore, this site would have to be viewed as a guidance text for those actually doing the Path under an adept’s supervision. It is a text reminding and keeping in front of the candidate the things he/she is working at mastering and making habit. It also provides an insight into directions their Path is heading, while providing some insight into the things their teacher or more advanced candidates are doing……with the understanding that nothing is to be tried or worked on until that which comes before it is mastered and the teacher shows them exactly how.