oved--according to
the Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary
liberation of the imprisoned soul, and according to spiritualists,
through mediumship--such a union between embodied and disembodied
spirits becomes possible. Thus was it that Patanjali's Yogis, and,
following in their steps, Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists,
maintained that in their hours of ecstasy, they had been united to, or
rather become as one with, God several times during the course of their
lives. This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the
Universal Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to
be put aside as entirely chimerical. In the case of the Theodidaktoi,
the only controvertible point, the dark spot on this philosophy of
extreme mysticism, was its claim to include that which is simply
ecstatic illumination, under the head of sensuous perception. In the
case of the Yogis, who maintained their ability to see Iswara "face to
face," this claim was successfully overthrown by the stern logic of the
followers of Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy. As to the
similar assumption made for their Greek followers, for a long array of
Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two claimants to
"God-seeing" within these last hundred years--Jacob Bohme and
Swedenborg--this pretension would and should have been philosophically
and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science, who are
spiritualists, had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere
phenomenalism of spiritualism.

The Alexandrian Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and
masters, or hierophants; and their rules were copied from the ancient
Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to Herodotus, brought them from
India. Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to divulge his
higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and
initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the
demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia, or
under-meaning. "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi,
the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be," says Epicurus. "He is
not an atheist who denies the existence of the gods, whom the multitude
worship, but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the
multitude." In his turn, Aristotle declares that of the "Divine Essence
pervading the whole world of Nature, wh