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"That which is above is like that which is below" — the motto of the alchemists, formulated not so long ago by the father of medieval alchemy, Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Greatest).

In practice, this statement can be understood as meaning that the upper world finds its reflection in the lower worlds, and this is accomplished, conditionally, through reflectors — beings endowed with awareness, including you and me.

Put simply, each of us is a conductor and reflector of the divine Will, and how perfectly you or I reflect the divine speaks to the degree of our impeccability. To reflect the Source impeccably literally means TO BECOME IT.

Thus, besides breathing, one of the purposes of any person is to reflect the light of the Source and manifest Its divine energy on all layers accessible to human awareness, including the material — the coarsest of all.

And there exist several systems of knowledge — teachings, by mastering which the student frees attention from self-absorption and directs it toward the Eternal, studies it, comprehends its nature and meanings.

And at each evolutionary level of the soul, this knowledge is its own. Religions — such as Judaism, Islam, or Christianity — are the elementary school of Western spirituality. And as the individual evolves — after hundreds of years, sometimes millennia — he gains access to the secret, closed teachings of these same branches. For Judaism, this is Kabbalah; for Islam, Sufism; for Christianity, Hesychasm (mystical Christianity).

A practitioner may also study other paths and depart from the original tradition — no one forbids a former Christian, for example, from studying Sufism or Kabbalah, especially since all these paths are closely intertwined and share one common original source — the Pentateuch of Moses. And Sufism and Kabbalah are in essence the same thing and in no way contradict each other — the difference lies in approaches and, perhaps, in complexity (Sufism is simpler).

My version — an adept chooses the teaching that is historically closer to him. For example, if for several consecutive incarnations he practiced Alchemy, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, then in this incarnation he will be better at Western world practices and will be drawn more to them than to some others he has never worked with. If before the current incarnation he was a Buddhist, Hindu, or Taoist, then today he will be better at practices from those paths and worse at those he never dealt with in the past.

Determining which branch you personally have a predisposition for is possible through practice. If, for example, after reading a book on practical Kabbalah you were able not only to grasp its essence but also to work with it practically and gain some spiritual experience, then in that case it makes sense to linger on it longer — it's quite possible that this is the direction you should move in.

If you are more inclined toward meditations and you perfectly understand what Buddhists talk about in their sacred books and do not consider what is written in them overly convoluted, or conversely — simplified and full of meaninglessness and fluff, but on the contrary — you see practical wisdom in them and for you it is a direct guide to action; if you notice in yourself a talent for disconnecting from the shackles of everyday existence and it takes you mere minutes, then you should look toward Eastern traditions.

If none of these traditions (Kabbalah, Sufism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Dzogchen, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Alchemy, Nagualism, and others) are understandable to you and you consider the explanations of the universe's structure by these systems to be complex and overly abstruse, then in that case, perhaps you should pay attention to religions — Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, and go that path.

Science, by the way, is also a religion, and it gets along perfectly with any variety of occult knowledge. Moreover, science complements this knowledge, and the reverse is also true — occult knowledge enriches science. And I am convinced that science without occultism will ultimately end up in a dead end, because in its essence it relies on the known, while occult knowledge in turn leads to the cognition of the unknowable, which is simply impossible to achieve relying only on intellect.

One of the most complex, yet extremely practical systems of knowledge about the subtle world, in my opinion and experience, is Kabbalah. To cognize Kabbalah, as indeed any other occult and sufficiently profound teaching, is possible mainly through sensory perception and entry into the subtle worlds by means of a special type of attention, which I call REVERSE-SIDE attention, since it is the Science of the Divine and its task does not include describing matter — the effect, mirrored from the first cause, which is precisely the task of the intellect itself.

Arthur O'Harra.

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