“Yes, but the vision of the good is not like the ray of the sun which, because it is fiery, dazzles the eyes with light and makes them shut. On the contrary, it illuminates to the extent that one capable of receiving intellectual splendor can receive it. It probes more sharply, but it does no harm, and it is full of all immortality.”
Isn’t it tragic that there are people and groups who believe that everything they need to know is known already? Isn’t the world upside down whenever religions label wonder and inquisitiveness, science and rational inquiry, as blasphemous and evil — or when people of science demean, belittle and despise the work of the spirit?
Only when we attempt to see the cosmos magically, mystically, gnostically and scientifically — without contradiction, exclusion, or strife — are we are truly engaged in the Great Work.
To a magician or alchemist it is the Philosopher’s Stone. To the gnostic it is Salvation or Enlightenment. The scientist imagines the Singularity, while the mystic speaks of Union, Oneness, Moksha or Nirvana. Whatever it is, whether we call it by one of those names or by some other — the Omega Point, the New Aeon, the Cosmic Christ — it is in our individual and collective future.
But only if we can open our eyes to all four ways of seeing and begin.
Robert Mitchell Jr. 