…“Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.” (1)…

1962… somewhere in England… and school assembly draws to a close… With these stout comforting words echoing in our heads, our day begins in the knowledge that Out There somewhere, a rather stern but gentle and supremely benevolent man, (whose appearance resembles a Victorian Patriarch complete with flowing white beard), watches over us with care, concern and ineffable love while we trudge off to double maths on a dreary, grey, drizzly Thursday morning.

‘Out There‘ is where we look for all the answers to all our seemingly un-answerable questions. The ancient Greeks created a fascinating mythology in an attempt to explain all the imponderables of life and in doing so, wrote some absorbing tales that would keep an eleven-year-old boy occupied for many a dull wet day.

Far from the idea of God as in… “Most blessed, most Glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise,” (1) there was a whole room-full of gods, an ancient sort of ‘league of super-heroes,’ who idled away their hours on top of Mount Olympus, only concerning themselves with the plight of humanity when some form of diversion from the daily tedium of immortality was required.

Immortality of course, meaning that they were there ‘for the duration,’ and were thus denied the mortal glory of a hero’s death, the victor’s spoils and other very mortal prizes.

When suitably motivated, the gods would take sides to help control the outcome of a mortal conflict as in the Trojan wars, so that their favourites might be victorious.

Inevitably, this could lead to gods falling out with other gods, as they, (rather curiously), seemed to suffer all the emotional frailties of mortal humans. Bouts of extreme jealousy, lust, and out-and-out hatred were all commonplace on Mount Olympus.

The god Zeus who was known for his disguises, seemed to have an insatiable sexual appetite. This led to certain mortal women whom Zeus had singled out for attention, being transformed into an assortment of creatures such as a cow (Io), and a swan (Leda), just so that Hera, the long-suffering wife of Zeus, might not suspect anything.

Hera however, was aware of his constant infidelities and would use her powers as queen of heaven to try to thwart each carefully arranged tryst, sometimes enlisting the help of other gods, with varying degrees of success.

As the inevitable resulting offspring would often become the founders of cities or great tribes, it seems that one function of these myths was to create a source of Greek national pride. Another function was to explain nature and natural occurrences.

The amorous visit of Zeus to Danae, disguised as a shower of gold, is an example of the romanticised expression of natural phenomena. The shower of gold is representing the sun’s rays, which germinate the seed buried in the ground.

One constant rule of mythology is that whatever happens among the gods above, mirrors events happening on the Earth below.

In primitive agricultural communities, recourse to war is rare and Goddess-worship is the rule. Herdsmen on the other hand tend to make fighting a profession and perhaps because bulls dominate their herds, as rams do flocks, they worship a male sky-god, typified by a bull or a ram.

It seems that mythology came about in an attempt to answer the age-old questions such as, “What happens when we die?” “Where do our souls go?” “Why are we here?” etc… etc…

The English adjective ‘mythical’ means ‘incredible’ and the fact that European mythologies don’t contain the biblical narratives says something about our notion of what is true and what is myth.

Through the ages, great teachers have arrived on Earth and the common thread which links them together is the notion that looking out there for answers to anything connected with divinity is fundamentally misguided. This thread can be traced back to Hermes who was a man before becoming deified. His better known alter-ego was the god and winged messenger known to the Romans as Mercury.

Zarathustra, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed all continued to teach that in order to touch divinity we must connect with our inner heart where the Soul resides. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within us all, which was his way of expressing the same thing.

This ancient wisdom also tells us that because of this, far from being ‘mere mortals,’ we are all equal and divine and that our ‘immortality’ refers to the separated aspect of the eternal Soul – our Spirit – which does not die with the body, but which reincarnates. However, in spite of this great wisdom, nearly all of us seem to have got a bit lost along the way.

Moreover, all these great teachers came up against huge resistance during their lives from the established order, in the form of the church, which perceived each of them as a threat to its hegemony. We all know that Jesus was crucified, but later on in history, the established Roman Catholic Church launched a crusade against whole communities of non-Catholics, in particular the “Cathars” in France, who were mercilessly massacred.

These religious institutions had hijacked religion for the principal purpose of controlling the population.

Our ancient teachers’ words were often not written down until many years after their deaths and, as such, became open to misinterpretation and misrepresentation.

It was much simpler for the church to keep people in their place with a vengeful God and a one-and-only life, than a God of love and reincarnation. The vengeful God would punish “sinners” who could end up in that “other place” if they failed to repent. Thus the power of the church to control, mostly through fear, continued relatively undiminished until the arrival of the secular state as we have it today.

Fortunately, the Ancient Wisdom is very much alive and well, and the work of Hermes, Zarathustra, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed is being continued by Serge Benhayon. His teachings present that our problems all stem from us having become separated from our inner selves, in particular, our inner heart where our divinity lies.

Thus, by looking out there for answers, we are rather like gods playing at being un-gods and for me this has a particularly familiar ring to it, very much in the style of the Greek gods’ mythology.

If the gods had everything including immortality and supernatural powers, why would they need to concern themselves with Joe Bloggs and his wife down below? Why the need for ‘gods’ to play at being ‘un-gods’?…

We have said that what happens among the gods above, mirrors events on Earth below and so the creators of the mythical stories are frequently using examples of mortal ‘weaknesses’ causing problems among the gods. Lust, envy, greed and jealousy all abound on Mount Olympus where one would expect harmony and tranquillity.

Thus the Greek gods were really just like ‘mortals’ but with super-human powers ‘bolted on.’  In the Ageless Wisdom teachings, True Divinity resides in the inner heart and so, had the myth-creators been aware of this, they could have connected with their own divinity as sons of God.

Serge Benhayon presents in the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom that the intellect is only a receiver of energy which is out there, but the inner heart contains all the knowledge and wisdom of the universe.

To borrow and rephrase a title from a well-known nineties T.V. series about, of all things, aliens,                                                                                              

… The Truth is ‘IN’ there …

By Jonathan Cooke, France

References:

1. net. (2018). Hymn: Immortal, invisible, God only wise. [online] Available at: https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/14? [Accessed 7 Jun. 2018].
2. Graves, R. and Guirand, F. (1996). New Larousse encyclopedia of mythology. London: Chancellor Press.

Further Reading:
Sin, Confession and the True Religion of the Ageless Wisdom
Me, my Brothers, Mohammad and Jesus at the Gym
Teachers of the Ageless Wisdom – The Lineage never dies