Lupelius - The School for Gods

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The higher our thoughts, the greater our lifeThe fundamental tenet of Lupelius’ philosophy is that inner states and events are twoaspects of a single reality. This does away with any distinction between an external and aninternal world, thereby making it possible for every man to guide his own destiny, throughknowledge of his own inner states and self‐mastery.Existence is our own invention and as such depends on us alone.Guided by Lupelius, I was discovering for the first time the vertiginous power, the‘concreteness of doing’, which lay hidden in the Christian mea culpa. For thousands of years,as though locked in a treasure chest, the very epitome of human intelligence had beenconserved in these two Latin words. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Only now did Irecognise this as the most concise and potent expression of the idea of responsibility. Meaculpa. This formula, capable of harnessing the universe, from the hierarchy of the planets tothe movements of the atoms, holds the secret of boundless energy.Modifying states of being can transform the events that happen to you. This is how a man,by studying himself and changing his way of thinking and feeling, can transform hishorizontal, temporal existence.Existence on Earth is our great School. A School of life which in the eyes of ordinary menappears to be a prison.We need to learn how to overturn our vision. Whatever men normally perceive as difficulty andmisfortune, whatever they curse and try to avoid at all costs, is actually the most valuable materialwhich can enable them to transform their psychology of death into a psychology of life.Life through this world is a School for Gods.Confusion, doubts, chaos, crisis, anger, despair and pain are all excellent conditions for growth.11 States and events 1A man’s being is made of states and his life of events. Our existence therefore runs alongtwo parallel tracks: the events which are the sequence of circumstances that come towards usduring our life on the conveyor belt of time and space, and our states which are the impulsesof our spirit, our moods, the emotions which arise within us in a mostly unconscious way. A22
man’s personal history is therefore made of events, horizontally, and of states, vertically.However, people usually think about their life and talk about it as if it were only made up ofexternal events. In reality, the type of events which occur, and consequently the quality of aperson’s external life, depends upon the quality of thought and on the states of being. Life isthus made of events but even more of states. We all believe, for example, when we go to aconference or to the theatre, that we are the ones to choose our seat; we are all sure that thismorning we chose what we were going to wear. In reality, the choice of seat and clothes wasnot made by ‘us’ but by our states of being.Everyone has a suit, a shirt, or some other item of clothing in their wardrobe which forsome reason they never feel like wearing. However they do not throw that garment awaybecause they know that, sooner or later, they will find themselves in a state of mind, a mood,a level of being, which will be in tune with it. When we ‘feel’ that way, we ‘choose’ thatgarment.The relationship between states and events, inner circumstances and outer events, themysterious relationship between a man’s psychology and the things that happen to him, areat the core of the question of free will and the age‐old enigma of whether destiny isdetermined by chance or necessity. Around this enigma, over the ages, men haveaccumulated the knowledge of a great science that today is unknown.The ancient Greeks maintained that there was a causal relationship between inner statesand external events. This archaic civilization firmly believed that a man’s destiny was theprojection of his inner world, of his being. They founded a science and an art on thisconviction that for them had the highest value. In the pre‐Homeric age, a wise man was notsomeone who was rich in experience or who had great knowledge but someone who couldshow what was unknown, who could predict the future. For the Greeks, shedding light ondarkness, defining the uncertain, was true knowledge and also an art. Other civilizations alsoexalted divination but no other people elevated it to the point of becoming the central tenet oftheir lives. All over the Hellenic world sanctuaries sprang up dedicated to the cult of Apolloto whom, more than to Dionysus,was attributed the dominion of knowledge. This was understood as the knowledge of humandestiny and its manifestation and communication. This Greek vocation and the art ofpredicting the future found its greatest expression in Delphi. This is why the god of Delphiwas a unifying image for that civilization and a symbol of Greece itself.The pilgrim who often travelled great distances and faced grave dangers to ask the godabout his future would find the Delphic inscription ‘Know Thyself’ engraved on thetympanum of the temple ‐ as if to say, ‘Do you want to know your future? Then knowyourself!’ In this apparently mocking paradox the Greeks set out the solution to the oldestriddle of humanity, the secret of all secrets, the answer to the age‐old question concerning theexistence of free will. A question that led all the philosophers in the world to ponderfeverishly whether to follow a fatalistic view of a predetermined and inevitable future or thebelief in the homo faber, man as maker of his own destiny. Sculpting this Delphic motto ontothe very temple dedicated to the most sacred art and the greatest of sciences, divination, the23
Page 1: Chapter IILupelius1 Encounter with
Page 4 and 5: Seeing me still perplexed, he unlea
Page 6 and 7: are indissolubly linked by a single
Page 8 and 9: clue, every new encounter on the tr
Page 10 and 11: those warrior monks were the legend
Page 12 and 13: I shook hands with him. I felt the
Page 14 and 15: mask…a strategic mask…Father S.
Page 16 and 17: Through the fragments I had been ab
Page 18 and 19: “Even orders centuries old can fo
Page 20 and 21: School for Gods’. The result was
Page 24 and 25: Greeks revealed the secret relation
Page 26 and 27: What we perceive as unexpected alwa
Page 28 and 29: Take the blame for everything, acce
Page 30 and 31: to Lupelius, this achievement is ph
Page 32 and 33: By using the techniques of fasting
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Page 36 and 37: of yet another failed experiment -
Page 38 and 39: Everyone invariably sees come to pa
Page 40 and 41: As I later recalled my attitude on
Page 42 and 43: A man that is whole and true… is
Page 44: in reality your song of sorrow, lik

Lupelius - The School for Gods

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