Historical Reprints
History
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It saves a lot of letters if I tell you why I have a certain title; it is said, 'It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.' In my first ten books I have tried to light a candle, or possibly two. In this, the eleventh book, I am trying to Feed the Flame.
This book is a picture of life utterly unlike anything we know in the Western world, and one in which occult powers and supernatural happenings play an important part. It is a continuation of the story of a man so completely possessed by the spirit of a Tibetan Lama from the Potala Monastery in Lhasa that he became, in fact, the Lama himself. This Lama suffered a long, arduous imprisonment, survived degradation, starvation, and soul-destroying tortures.
Rampa, in essence, became one of the first to talk of themselves in terms of being a "Walk-In." The lama stated his purpose in entering the body of the westerner .
Published in 1798 this is probably the most quoted text regarding the alleged conspiratorial designs of Freemasonry. -- BEING AT a friend's house in the country during some part of the summer 1795, I there saw a volume of a German periodical work, called Religions Begebenheiten, i.e. Religious Occurrences; in which there was an account of the various schisms in the Fraternity of Free Masons, with frequent allusions to the origin and history of that celebrated association.
Few books have aroused more controversy in recent years than Lobsang Rampa's THE THIRD EYE, and the other works which have come from his pen.
The reason is simple enough. When an Englishman claims that his body has been taken over by the spirit of a Tibetan Lama, he can reasonably expect mockery.
Magick has been with us since the beginning of time. When man first became aware of himself and his surroundings, he looked up into the heavens and saw the ultimate energies that permeate the universe. The first priests and shamans realized that this universal energy also courses through the very being of all that inhabit this universe, and the infinite number of universes that make up creation.
Well, just about everyone does astral travel when they go to sleep. The astral body goes off, and the physical body is meant to remain more or less passive, twisting and turning a bit, of course, in order that muscles may not be strained by being contracted for too long in one position.
People hooted and jeered when, some few years ago, I wrote in The Third Eye that I had flown in kites. One would have thought that I had committed a great crime in saying that. But now-well, we look about and we can see people flying in kites. Some of them are high above the water being towed by a speed boat. Yet others are kites with a man aboard, he stands on the edge of a cliff or high piece of ground, and then he jumps off and he is actually flying in a kite. Nobody says now that Lobsang Rampa was right, but they certainly did hoot when I wrote about kite flying.
IN all the darkest pages of the malign supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pest. Even to-day in certain quarters of the world, in remoter districts of Europe itself, Transylvania, Slavonia, the isles and mountains of Greece, the peasant will take the law into his own bands and utterly destroy the carrion who--as it is yet firmly believed--at night will issue from his unhallowed grave to spread the infection of vampirism throughout the countryside.
IN all the darkest pages of the malign supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pest. Even to-day in certain quarters of the world, in remoter districts of Europe itself, Transylvania, Slavonia, the isles and mountains of Greece, the peasant will take the law into his own bands and utterly destroy the carrion who--as it is yet firmly believed--at night will issue from his unhallowed grave to spread the infection of vampirism throughout the countryside.
AMONG the strange mysterious beings, with which the eighteenth century was so richly dowered, no one has commanded more universal comment and attention than the mystic who was known by the name of the Comte de St. Germain. A hero of romance; a charlatan; a swindler and an adventurer; rich and varied were the names that showered freely upon him. Hated by the many, loved and reverenced by the few, time has not yet lifted the veil which screened his true mission from the vulgar speculators of the period.
In one of his tales concerning vampires, St.Germain mentioned in an offhand way that he possessed the wand or staff with which Moses brought water from the rock, adding that it had been presented to him at Babylon during the reign of Cyrus the Great.
THE time has arrived, when the Great Wisdom, held and guarded for many centuries in the Far East, is now to come forth in America, at the command of those Great Ascended Masters who direct and protect the evolution of mankind upon this earth.
The Great Ascended Master, Saint Germain, throughout this series of books, is one of those Powerful Emissaries from the Spiritual Hierarchy of Ascended Masters who govern this planet.
TWO BOOKS IN ONE VOLUME! That it was a temple of the Druids, of the patriarchal mode, who were a most ancient oriental colony. In later times, the Belgae from the continent, conquer'd this country from them. Whence these stones were brought? Of their nature, magnitude, weight. Of the measure of the Druids, the ancient Hebrew cubit, and its proportion to the English foot.
To those who wish to understand the reason of this steady recurrence of mystic tradition in every century, these studies may be of some use. They will serve as literary landmarks to guide the seeker to those distant sources whence flow faint echoes of divine truths--the heritage of the divine human race; truths that bring dim memories to the soul which are its highest impulse, and give the clue that guides it to the inner "science of the soul"--the mystic quest of all the saints, and the hidden truth that all religions have tried to teach, and which only a few in each religion have ever realized.