illusion and materialism

 
 "Anyone earnestly participating in the activities of any more or less psychic group automatically allows himself to be psychically penetrated by the collective field of energy having been built through the centuries by those actually making use of the specific techniques. While this penetration may make great power available to the participant, it may also have a binding character depending upon whether in the past the group-energy has been used constructively or destructively, or, what is more frequent, for a mixture of motives. European occultism, especially where ceremonial magic or Kabbalistic procedures are concerned, has a very dubious record.
...
  Waves of civilization interpenetrate as they move through the one ocean of planetary mind. We give many names to this mind from the point of view of our local shore line. To our consciousness, such shore lines are the great super-egos we call traditions. When they serve the one purpose of humanity, these traditions have an aura of sublimity. When they mainly serve the purpose of those who hold them as prized possessions, they are best means to an end, just as scaffolds are a means to an end in the raising of a temple.
   Only the temples are esoteric. All scaffolds are exoteric, which does not mean that they are unnecessary. But it is best for us to know that they are scaffolds, even if we are told they are the walls of the temples. "

Dane Rudhyar from Traditions and Illusions



 "The prison of our dreams and illusions keeps us confined until we emerge with a new vision, or are forced back unenlightened into a new cycle of bondage. Or else it signifies the closing chapter of a period well lived and the transition to a new birth at a higher level of selfhood whose foundations will have been our altruistic work for society and our friends, inspired as it was by noble and magnanimous ideals."

Dane Rudhyar from The Astrology of Personality