Gilbert Williams, The Vortex (1982)
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The Teachings of the Adepts, part II
“There is an invisible universe within the visible one, a world of causes within the world of effects. There is force within matter, and the two are one, and are dependent for their existence on a third, which is the mysterious cause of their existence. There is a world of soul within a world of matter, and the two are one, and caused by the world of spirit. And within these worlds are other worlds, visible and invisible ones. Some are known to modern science, of others she does not even know that they exist; for, as the material worlds of suns and planets and stars, the worlds of animate and inanimate beings, from man the lord of creation down to the microscopic world with its countless inhabitants, can only be seen by him who is in the possession of the powers necessary for their perception, likewise the world of the soul and the realms of the spirit can only be known to him whose inner senses are awakened to life. The things of the body are seen through the instrumentality of the body, but the things of the soul require the power of spiritual perception.
This power of spiritual perception, potentially contained in every man, but developed in few, is almost unknown to the guardians of science in our modern civilization, because learning is often separated from wisdom, and the calculating intellect seeking for worms in the dark caverns of the earth cannot see the genius that floats towards the light and it cannot realize his existence. And yet this ancient science, which the moderns ignore, is perhaps as old as the world. It was known to the ancient prophets, to the Arhats and Rishis of the East, to initiated Brahmins, Egyptians, and Greeks. Its fundamental doctrines are found in the Vedas as well as in the Bible. Upon these doctrines rest the fundaments of the religions of the world. They formed the essence of the secrets that were revealed only to the initiated in the inner temple where the ancient mysteries were taught, and whose disclosure to the vulgar was forbidden under the penalty of torture and death. They were the secrets known to the ancient sages and to the Adepts and Rosicrucians of the Middle Ages, and upon a partial understanding of their truths rests the system of modern Freemasonry.”
— Franz Hartmann, The Life of Paracelsus
