Two weeks ago, a man’s life ended in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was gunned down in the darkened living room of the home he had had recently rented, while his wife of two weeks watched helplessly as the life drained from his body. The perpetrators, (of which there were two), were arrested and confessed shortly thereafter. It turns out that the triggerman had been persuaded to accompany his friend to this home in order to execute the occupant of the property for the unspeakable atrocity of sleeping with the latter’s girlfriend. As already noted, their mission was a complete success; the lone exception being that the intended victim had moved from the property some weeks before. The man who died was, by all accounts, a decent, hard working human being, who had just happened to rent the wrong house.

On the same day, halfway around the world, a different scenario played out; a scenario which has become so commonplace that most of us are now immune to the daily intonations of this occurrence on the nightly news. Someone had been persuaded that the highest and best use of his life involved strapping a mass of explosives to his body and strolling into the midst of a busy market in Baghdad. Over twenty people lost their lives, while scores of others suffered horrible injuries.

The Albuquerque story is just one of thousands that play out daily in the States. Crime, drug abuse, contempt for education and a complete lack of sexual mores has absolutely riddled the underclass both here and in Western Europe. Decadence reigns, and popular culture continues to both drive and reflect the absence of any sense of coherent morality in the West. At the same time, the Baghdad incident demonstrates the continuing horror inflicted upon the world by the most recent incarnation of dogmatic theism.

The issue of deteriorating morality that we are faced with might be among the most tragic consequences of the incredible war of egos that defines global society in today’s world. While it is true that the rise of materialism has led to tremendous technological accomplishments, the associated rise of secular naturalism has had consequences that are far from humane, as outlined above.

Those of a religious persuasion, who long for and advocate a return to the rigid Christian morality of 19th century England, or a Puritan and evangelical America, are deluding themselves. They also apparently don’t understand that by doing so, they are essentially impotent against the rising influence of Islam in Western Europe, and those who envision the eventual perfection of society to be accomplished through widespread adoption of Sharia Law. The Judeo-Christian argument against the Islamic vision boils down to little more than: “My God’s better than yours”.

This all came to mind as a consequence of reading Manly P. Hall’s encyclopedic treatment of the ancient Mystery Schools and eclectic esoteric knowledge, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, in which Hall delivers a lengthy, passionate cry for the rediscovery of the lost wisdom of humanity’s past. Certain observations that he made, while writing in 1928, speak directly to both the loss of morality that infects our world today, and contain a glimmer of hope for our common future.

As an all-too brief introduction to Hall’s premise, The Secret Teachings demonstrates that nearly all of the ancient societies were either heavily influenced by, or developed organically in a very like manner to, the Hermetic philosophy of ancient Egypt, the actual history of which is lost to an unknown age. What remains is but fragments and mythology, but the fundamental understanding of the “Thrice Great Hermes’ remains, dormant and forgotten, at the heart of all of the religions on earth.

The common denominator between all of the ancients was an understanding that can only be described as panentheistic idealism. The ancient societies that Hall exhaustively researched while writing his manifesto clearly had a structure that far surpassed our own in many respects. This was accomplished through the understanding and acceptance of a single worldview, based on One truth, which was distributed throughout the populace in a definite fashion.

Two observations Hall makes are particularly critical to the issue of reinstating an appreciation for morality, as well as many other issues faced by global society today. The first has to do with the relationship between philosophy, science and religion. Hall writes:

“Among the ancients, philosophy, science, and religion were never considered as separate units: each was regarded as an integral part of the whole. Philosophy was scientific and religious; science was philosophic and religious; religion was philosophic and scientific. Perfect wisdom was considered unattainable save as the result of harmonizing all three of these expressions of mental and moral activity.”

It is abundantly clear that our world today is suffering from the failure to grasp the necessity of the reintegration of these three aspects of perfect wisdom. We have not only separated the aspects, but what remains of religion and philosophy has been shattered into countless unintelligible pieces. I would posit that mankind will not find solutions to its ills until it learns to reintegrate these three disciplines.

The second point that Hall makes has to do with how the ancient societies accomplished the integration of their ideals throughout the whole of their social, cultural and intellectual structure. After acknowledging that there are different levels of mental acuity among men, and addressing the issue of creating adherence to a single standard, Hall writes:

“Those of immature mentality, on the other hand, when similarly confronted [by moral choices], are overwhelmed. While the former [the elite] may be qualified to solve the riddle of their own destiny, the latter must be led like a flock of sheep and taught in simple language. They depend almost entirely upon the ministrations of the shepherd. The Apostle Paul said that these little ones must be fed with milk, but that meat is the food of strong men. Thoughtlessness is almost synonymous with childishness, while thoughtfulness is symbolic of maturity.

“There are, however, but few mature minds in the world; and thus it was that the philosophic-religious doctrines of the pagans were divided to meet the needs of these two fundamental groups of human intellect--one philosophic, the other incapable of appreciating the deeper mysteries of life. To the discerning few were revealed the esoteric, or spiritual, teachings, while the unqualified many received only the literal, or exoteric, interpretations.”

He expands on this in is introduction to Kabbalah, the mystical branch of Judaism which grew to become embraced by Jews and Christians alike in the medieval period, and has attracted resurgent interest in recent years:

“Hebrew theology was divided into three distinct parts. The first was the law, the second was the soul of the law, and the third was the soul of the soul of the law. The law was taught to all the children of Israel; the Mishna, or the soul of the law, was revealed to the Rabbins and teachers; but the Qabbalah, the soul of the soul of the law, was cunningly concealed, and only the highest initiates among the Jews were instructed in its secret principles.”

As I see it, the only choice that remains to the world today is to return to an understanding of reality that was known to the ancients, with the ensuing coherent distribution of that understanding to the masses. I actually think this has already begun, and these efforts are underway. Though many may not be cognizant of the ancient roots behind it, people are beginning to wake up.

On the level of the intellectual elite, the scholar Peter Kingsley has written extensively about the loss of the wisdom tradition at the heart of Western society in the hopes of restoring it. The success of writers such as Eckhart Tolle is due to a longing for wholeness felt by many intelligent individuals of all faiths, as well as those with no faith at all. There are professionals working in prevention in disadvantaged communities, as well as prison populations, to disseminate the understanding of psychology known as Health Realization, which is based on the insights of Sydney Banks. The findings of neuroscience are causing many to revisit reductionist assumptions regarding the mind/matter problem, as addressed in a recent New York Times article by David Brooks. The astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s efforts in establishing The Institute of Noetic Sciences is the result of a momentary glimpse of truth, and the recent media coverage of Jill Bolte Taylor’s transformation during and following her stroke, also profiled in a recent Times piece, are but a few examples.

I am certain that we are on the cusp of a paradigm change of significant proportions, though I do wonder if it will arrive without catastrophic consequences resulting from mankind’s appalling arrogance of the last 2500 years. And though it may appear to be a new understanding of reality, it will in fact be a return to an ancient understanding of reality, which Hall spent his entire life attempting to resurrect.

If and when it does, the masses, to paraphrase St. Paul, will be fed new milk. The common understanding disseminated will be that everyone and everything on earth, as well as the entire cosmos we inhabit, is but an aspect of the One divine source of existence, to which we are all deeply connected. This will not come about because someone decrees it to be so, but rather the elite of society will know this as absolute fact through conscious realization, and fully embody it. The priests, scientists and philosophers will all likely have moments of direct realization themselves, and the consequences of their direct understanding will ripple through all fields, leading to the reintegration of the three disciplines and discoveries that are entirely inconceivable from our current perspective. The masses will be taught to develop their intuitive sense, leading to a deepening respect for themselves and others, and the eventual disappearance of the awful problems faced by the underclass, as well as the disappearance, into the dark recesses of history, of the blood-soaked effects of over two millennia of horrific dualism.

That’s our hope for the future, and it may take centuries. It may also require tremendous pain before it arrives. Pain which, I’m afraid, is already upon us. A young widow in Albuquerque, and millions in the Middle East, could all speak to that fact much better than I.