These are excerpted from “The Unfettered Mind – Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master” by Takuan Sōhō and translated by William Scott Wilson published by Kodansha International.
“Takuan Sōhō (沢庵 宗彭, December 24, 1573 – January 27, 1645) was a Japanese Buddhist prelate during the Sengoku and early Edo Periods of Japanese history. He was a major figure in the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism. Noted for his calligraphy, poetry, tea ceremony, he is also popularly credited with the invention of the takuan pickled radish.”
In Connection with the Council Chamber of Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World
As this subject concerns one of the seven goals towards which the Masters aim after They have attained the fifth initiation, it will be obvious to you that there is little that I can say about it. One of the seven Paths for which the Way of the Higher Evolution prepares the senior initiates is the Path of Earth Service. This Path, as you know, keeps the Masters attached to service in the three worlds for a period much longer than the average. It involves tremendous sacrifice. Just as the disciple has to live a dual life, with one part of his reflective nature and awareness centered in the life of the Hierarchy and the other part of his mental responsiveness equally centered on life in the three worlds, and this simultaneously, so the Master, when He chooses this Path, forms a constituent part of the Council Chamber of the Lord of the World and at the same time works consciously in the three worlds, via the Hierarchy (of which He remains also a part), and with the human and subhuman kingdoms in nature. As evolution proceeds, He will work increasingly via humanity because humanity will be shouldering its responsibilities as the Macrocosm of the lesser microcosm. This dual activity entails much specialized training, and as the initiatory process becomes exoteric and men everywhere recognize it and participate in it, the training which Members of the Hierarchy also undergo will not be so secret and mysterious as it is today. But the time has not yet come to publicize it.
Only certain further generalizations are here possible, some of which are already known to you because they are so broad that their inclusions and implications are obvious. This, for instance, concerns the “center where the Will of God is known”. Here at Shamballa work Those Who have unified Their personality will and Their spiritual will with the universal will, and such a unification inevitably brings knowledge. It is, however, not knowledge as you understand it. It is a blend of wisdom based on knowledge, understanding based on intuitive perception, and identification based on alignment, esoterically comprehended. For this peculiar condition or awareness we have no word in any language, and only the utilization (the trained utilization) of the abstract mind can possibly convey to you even an embryonic factual conception. But that type of imaginative conception will become more common during the next two centuries, and my words here will therefore serve an ultimate purpose. Those Who form the Council Chamber of the Great Lord are under no misapprehension as to His will because They see it whole. Paul, the initiate, hints at this when writing one of the Epistles; he is in touch then with certain Members of the Hierarchy and is concerned with the theme of Love, which is the fundamental hierarchical theme and motive. He says to Them: “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then shall we know even as we are known.” He there points towards the future progress of the Hierarchy – a progress which remains as yet only a vague promise, lacking form and shape. But he wrote for initiates to whom love was a growing, vital concern, and to whom love and its practice meant light and the basic motif of all living, divine activity. It is not possible to reveal the will of God and the motivating Purpose of His manifesting Self, except to Those Who have demonstrated perfected love and Who register no sense of disunion or the faintest reaction to separateness.
At Shamballa, the Great Lives Who function there not only see manifestation whole and apart from all the limitations of time, but They feel all the major evolutionary impulses which are bringing the developing world into line with the divine Will. They embody those impulses not in terms of progressive movement, but in terms of one great divine and spiritual reaction. This idea can perhaps be best understood by you in terms of the Eternal AUM which is the symbol of the Eternal NOW. You have been told, and it has been demonstrated, that the AUM is composed of one major Sound, three minor sounds, and seven subsidiary vibratory tones. So it is with the Will of God which is embodied and held in synthesis by the Members of the Council Chamber. To Them, as They “hold the Will of God in solution, it is one clear note; as They see that Will in motion, it is three abiding chords, carrying outwards into all the worlds the Purpose of the ONE Who for aeons will abide; as They impel that Will to demonstrate, it is seven vibratory tones, drawing out into the reflected worlds the structure of the Plan. And thus the note, the chords and tone produce the Plan, reveal the Purpose and indicate God’s Will.” This is a quotation from certain of the ancient Archives which constitute the study of the Masters; they relate to the nature of Shamballa, its work and emanating energies.
Shamballa, as it constitutes the synthesis of understanding where our Earth is concerned, is also the center where the highest Will of the Solar Logos is imposed upon the Will of our planetary Logos, Who is, as you know, only a center in His greater body of manifestation. With this item of information you can have no possible concern; the Masters Themselves are only learning the Will of the planetary Logos; the objective of effort in Shamballa is, however, the apprehension of solar Purpose, the Plan of which is working out on the highest levels of our planetary system, just as the Will, Purpose and Plan of Shamballa work out on the three lowest levels of our planetary system. Again, this item of information serves only to indicate hierarchical objectives, and those objectives extend away from time and space into the Mind of God Himself.
There are certain synonyms which here may serve to develop your synthetic thinking and so bring in a definite measure of enlightenment.
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SHAMBALLA
HIERARCHY
HUMANITY
Synthesis
Unity
Separation
Will
Purpose
Plan
Life
Soul
Appearance
Spirit
Consciousness
Substance
Livingness
Organism
Organization
Apprehension
Polarization
Focus of Activity
Power
Momentum
Action
Energy
Distribution
Forces
Direction
Transmission
Reception
Head
Heart
Throat
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It will be apparent to you how little you can understand of the Shamballa intention when you realize that it is not easy for you to see any true distinction between unity and synthesis and, at the same time, how impossible it is for me to make the distinction clear. All I can say is that synthesis is, whilst unity is achieved and is the reward of action and effort. As you progress upon the Path of Initiation the meaning of unity clarifies. As you direct yourself towards the Way of the Higher Evolution synthesis emerges. More than that it would be useless for me to say.
This problem of the apparently impenetrable darkness of intention as grasped by Shamballa, of meaning, of inscrutability, of a spiritual imperviousness which holds, in spite of all fluctuations in the three worlds of human evolution and the remaining two of superhuman unfoldment, provides a situation to which the Hierarchy has to make adjustment through alignment. You are, in your small way, making your adjustment to the Hierarchy through a steady construction of the antahkarana, and in so doing are aiding in the construction of the antahkarana which unites Humanity and the Hierarchy – the first few strands of which were established through the sacrifices of certain of the Sons of God when the Hierarchy was founded on Earth. Today, the Hierarchy is working at the establishing of the linking strands between Itself and Shamballa, and good progress has already been made. It might be said here that for the past seven hundred years the chain of Hierarchy has been complete; by this I mean that the planetary rainbow bridge uniting the three major centers has existed. The task ahead of all these three major centers, working in alignment through adjustment, is to strengthen and beautify (if I may so express it), to electrify this bridge, thus producing full planetary inter-communication between the three centers and the four minor centers, so that “the weight of the Will of God, the momentum of the Purpose of Sanat Kumara and the Plan of His Representatives may progress unimpeded from point to point, from sphere to sphere and from glory to glory.”
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It is this complete establishment of relationship between Shamballa, the Hierarchy and Humanity which brought about the planetary crisis through which the world has just passed and, from some standpoints, is still passing. Shamballa, as I have told you, can now reach Humanity, the third major center, directly, and therefore has two points of planetary contact: the first, via the Hierarchy, as has been for long the case, and secondly, in a straight line, carrying energy direct to Humanity, without any transmission and consequent modifying of impact, as has also been the case hitherto. When this direct line of spiritual, dynamic, electrical energy made its first impact on earth (after the Great Council held in 1825), it first of all awakened men’s thinking in a new and comprehensive way, producing the great ideologies; it aroused their massed desire, and registered obstruction on the physical plane. It found its course impeded and discovered it was faced with barriers. This energy from Shamballa, being an aspect of the ray of the destroyer, proceeded to “burn up” in the fires of destruction, all such hindrances upon the planes in the three worlds. This was the deeply esoteric and unrecognized cause of the war – the beneficent bringing to an end of the impediments to the free flow of spiritual energy down into the third center; this was the factor which called “evil from its hidden place” and brought the opposing forces to the surface of existence, prior to their “sealing”. To the extent that this was so, mankind in the World War (1914-1945) was the unhappy victim of spiritual circumstance; however, from the angle of man’s historical past, humanity was the engineer of its own fate; but it took both the esoteric activity of Shamballa and the exoteric activity of humanity over a millenia of years to precipitate the conditions which made this new alignment possible and brought about the sealing (still being carried slowly forward), and plunged mankind into the vortex of war. This impelling downpouring energy from the highest center penetrated not only to the heart of humanity, but into the very depths of the mineral kingdom, implicating also the animal and the vegetable expressions of divine life.
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Excerpted from:
The Externalization of the Hierarchy – Section IV – Stages in the Externalization
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Atr. Mark Twain
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To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
Nicolaus Copernicus
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To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
Marilyn vos Savant
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I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.
Ruben Blades
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The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Albert Einstein
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Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Confucius
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Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Karl Popper
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All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
Leonardo da Vinci
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Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
George Gurdjieff
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Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.
Hippocrates
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The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.
Bertrand Russell
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Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Plato
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The true method of knowledge is experiment.
William Blake
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Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
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There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
Albert Einstein
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Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Brian O’Driscoll
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The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
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Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.
Robert Anthony
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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
The question anent initiation is one that is coming more and more before the public. Before many centuries pass the old mysteries will be restored, and an inner body will exist in the Church – the Church of the period, of which the nucleus is already forming – wherein the first initiation will become esoteric, in this sense only, that the taking of the first initiation will, before so very long, be the most sacred ceremony of the Church, performed esoterically as one of the mysteries given at stated periods, attended by those concerned. It will also hold a similar place in the ritual of the Masons. At this ceremony those ready for the first initiation will be publicly admitted to the Lodge by one of its members, authorized to do so by the great Hierophant Himself.
Four Words Defined
When we speak of Initiation, of wisdom, of knowledge, or of the probationary Path, what do we mean? We use the words so glibly, without due consideration of the meaning involved. Take, for instance, the word first mentioned. Many are the definitions, and many are the explanations to be found as to its scope, the preparatory steps, the work to be done between initiations, and its result and effects. One thing before all else is apparent to the most superficial student, and that is, that the magnitude of the subject is such that in order to deal with it adequately one should be able to write from the viewpoint of an initiate; when this is not the case, anything that is said may be reasonable, logical, interesting, or suggestive, but not conclusive.
The word Initiation comes from two Latin words, in, into; and ire, to go; therefore, the making of a beginning, or the entrance into something. It posits, in its widest sense, in the case we are studying, an entrance into the spiritual life, or into a fresh stage in that life. It is the first step, and the succeeding steps, upon the Path of Holiness. Literally, therefore, a man who has taken the first initiation is one who has taken the first step into the spiritual kingdom, having passed out of the definitely human kingdom into the superhuman. Just as he passed out of the animal kingdom into the human at individualization, so he has entered upon the life of the spirit, and for the first time has the right to be called a “spiritual man” in the technical significance of the word. He is entering upon the fifth or final stage in our present fivefold evolution. Having groped his way through the Hall of Ignorance during many ages, and having gone to school in the Hall of Learning, he is now entering into the university, or the Hall of Wisdom. When he has passed through that school he will graduate with his degree as a Master of Compassion.
It might be of benefit to us also if we studied first the difference or the connection between Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. Though in ordinary parlance they are frequently interchanged, as used technically they are dissimilar.
Knowledge isthe product of the Hall of Learning. It might be termed the sumtotal of human discovery and experience, that which can be recognized by the five senses, and be correlated, diagnosed, and defined by the use of the human intellect. It is that about which we feel mental certitude, or that which we can ascertain by the use of experiment. It is the compendium of the arts and sciences. It concerns all that deals with the building and developing of the form side of things. Therefore it concerns the material side of evolution, matter in the solar systems, in the planet, in the three worlds of human evolution, and in the bodies of men.
Wisdom isthe product of the Hall of Wisdom. It has to do with the development of the life within the form, with the progress of the spirit through those ever-changing vehicles, and with the expansions of consciousness that succeed each other from life to life. It deals with the life side of evolution. Since it deals with the essence of things and not with the things themselves, it is the intuitive apprehension of truth apart from the reasoning faculty, and the innate perception that can distinguish between the false and the true, between the real and the unreal. It is more than that, for it is also the growing capacity of the Thinker to enter increasingly into the mind of the Logos, to realize the true inwardness of the great pageant of the universe, to vision the objective, and to harmonize more and more with the higher measure. For our present purpose (which is to study somewhat the Path of Holiness and its various stages) it may be described as the realization of the “Kingdom of God within,” and the apprehension of the “Kingdom of God without” in the solar system. Perhaps it might be expressed as the gradual blending of the paths of the mystic and the occultist, – the rearing of the temple of wisdom upon the foundation of knowledge.
Wisdom is the science of the spirit, just as knowledge is the science of matter. Knowledge is separate and objective, whilst wisdom is synthetic and subjective. Knowledge divides; wisdom unites. Knowledge differentiates whilst wisdom blends. What, then, is meant by the understanding?
The understandingmay be defined as the faculty of the Thinker in Time to appropriate knowledge as the foundation for wisdom, that which enables him to adapt the things of form to the life of the spirit, and to take the flashes of inspiration that come to him from the Hall of Wisdom and link them to the facts of the Hall of Learning. Perhaps the whole idea might be expressed in this way:
Wisdom concerns the one Self, knowledge deals with the not-self, whilst the understanding is the point of view of the Ego, or Thinker, or his relation between them.
In the Hall of Ignorance the form controls, and the material side of things has the predominance. Man is there polarized in the personality or lower self. In the Hall of Learning the higher self, or Ego, strives to dominate that form until gradually a point of equilibrium is reached where the man is controlled entirely by neither. Later the Ego controls more and more, until in the Hall of Wisdom it dominates in the three lower worlds, and in increasing degree the inherent divinity assumes the mastery.
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Excerpted from:
Initiation, Human and Solar – Chapter II – Initiation Defined
Yesterday I got absolutely soaked finishing off mowing one of the lawns. I was only in the rain for five minutes or so, but I got wet through. I had forgotten how much I liked being out in the rain. As a consequence of riding the sit on mower I had John Wayne cowboy hips last night. “Get off your horse…”
This morning I had a very weird dream.
In that dream were my dead parents and J. He too is dead. He came into my office carrying with him a bird of prey. My desk was cluttered with my patent application. The bird of prey looked to be part eagle, part owl. It stood on the table.
I picked up my camera with the telephoto lens on and went to take its photo.
{In “real life” my camera is on the table to my right on top of my patent application documents.}
The bird, in impeccable English, said to me that it did not want to have its photo taken. It said that the flash hurt its eye, specifically the left eye.
I put the camera down.
It walked along the table and then stood directly in front of me.
It leaned forward and touched its beak to my nose. The feeling was not of threat but of a kind of camaraderie. We were in tune.
I asked if I could take its photo without flash.
It said yes and stepped back.
I picked up the camera, now with a normal lens on it.
It let me take several pictures…
The dream ended and I felt invigorated.
This is the closest image I could find on the internet, an eagle owl.
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Nose is the dreaming symbol for personal power
Birds of prey except owls are the symbol for power as in knowledge
Owls are death of the old / wisdom
Dead people – death of the old…patent thinking is old? Perhaps.
Photography is the need to recapitulate the contents of the image.
Eye is sobriety / clarity
Left is left side knowledge / feeling
This is about my relationship with power, knowledge and wisdom, methinks, peut-être…
Traou an Dour 
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