Page 64 - Gnosis volume 2

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to draw our Mixtus Orbis considerably closer to the Deuterocosmos.

At this point, it is necessary to make a distinction between the esoteric and the

scientifical significance of these events. Man has lost the capacity of being astonished,
of believing in the marvellous; he has kept only a blunt-edged intellectual curiosity. It is

more a feeling of vanity which is aroused in the majority of people, a feeling that leads

to self-satisfaction, that slave of the General Law, whose efforts tend to stem moral
evolution. This same General Law makes man react against anything sudden or new,

renders him skeptical of the miraculous and instills in him hatred of those who try to

awaken these feelings: Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killeth the prophets and
5
stonest them which are sent unto thee, said Jesus . The reason is that, especially in

modern man, the gorging of the intellectual centre is responsible for an aggravation of
6
the critical sense which, simultaneously, gives him the access to knowledge and limits
his aptitude to understand.

Knowledge is compatible with sleep but understanding consists of a lively curiosity
guided by intuition. It is understanding that makes one act, for, being a positive

emotion, it surpasses immobility.

And again, it is understanding that is responsible for the anxiety that one feels when

one considers techni-

5 Matthew, XXIII, 37; Luke, XIII, 34.
6
Intellectual sector of the negative part of the intellectual Centre. Ref. T. I, pp. 44-45 French
original version; pp. 39-40, English manuscript.