Page 48 - Gnosis volume 2

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Man, on the contrary, lives in a realm of doubts and of interior conflict which,

sometimes, literally tear him asunder. The shelter of a bourgeois life, with its mediocre

passions, its voluntarily limited interests and its slow pace, is not a guarantee for an
unjolted existence. A day comes when this scaffolding of wiles towards God and oneself,

falls into pieces: an unexpected tempestuous passion sweeps it away and nothing

remains but a poor, crushed human being, faced with the insoluble, or apparently
insoluble problem of building a new life.

In his personal evolution, man is faced with a double aim: on the one hand, with

preservation and procreation, which are the after-effects of his animal life; and on the

other hand, with his esoteric development which will enable him to identify himself with

his Individuality by awakening to the consciousness of his real I at the time of his second
Birth — in this life, if possible.

Naturally, the second aim is far more important than the first; their value has no

common denominator. But the man without hardly knows this; and he perishes for
copper, mistaking it for gold.

*
* *

From times immemorial, the esoteric Tradition has preserved the evolutionary

conspectus of the human species, according to the growth-development process,
conspectus of which the Bible has left us a symbolical account: Greek philosophy, and

certain other texts relating to