“Wisdom, the true origin of all knowledge, represents the highest treasure that the human being can ever succeed in possessing in this or any other century, on the planet Earth or anywhere else in the far reaches of the Universe. It is the arte magnum, the perfect vision of the essential reality of Nature, which encompasses developing the capacity to see oneself objectively, and evaluating the true level of development of one’s own instrument of knowledge, the mind.
All knowledge, in order to be true, has to be based on man’s internal reality, and has to be integrated into a wise, just, omnipresent, immortal, and eternal nature. The ability to see reality is not a congenital capacity. The human being is only able to observe the map that he himself created from a subjective, limited, and rationalized interpretation.
This process creates a personalized pseudo-reality, of which there are as many as there are inhabitants of this planet. I call this imaginative creation “social reality,” since in practice, the individual is a mere cultural resonator and an appendage of the collective psyche of humanity. This is why people live “halfway” and are a mixture of good and bad; why they are a little asleep and a little awake; why they are insignificant even with all their delusions of grandeur. In other words, they do not live profoundly and cannot even grasp the overwhelming significance of this fact. They just graze the surface of the planet and the epidermis of knowledge.
All authentic wisdom is “meaningful” and not “informational.” It can only be comprehended at the level of BEING, and not through merely intellectual faculties.
This initiation is a mystical and transcendental event that offers the individual a certain opportunity to cross the threshold that leads to the path towards spiritual perfection and cosmic wisdom. If the individual triumphs in such an undertaking, he becomes a Stellar Man. This represents the highest goal that Homo sapiens can aspire to, and which corresponds to the culmination of the evolutionary process, but which the species would reach only after many thousands of years of successful development.
Making this ascending leap leads the individual to completely overcome his animal condition, thereby moving him up one step on the evolutionary scale in the Universe. The path of self-perfection is long and arduous. There can be no other way than to pursue the attainment of authentic power over oneself and one’s own existence, and to pursue the possession of a state of consciousness in which disharmony, destructiveness, ugliness, aggression, and unhappiness no longer exist.
The real Hermetic Initiate acquires the capacity to transcend such petty realities, to instead place himself in the unlimited and infinite context of absolute reality; that which transcends time and space. From that moment on, he will never again be defeated by hesitation, loneliness, or doubt. He will have united himself harmoniously with that unique and powerful force which is a creator and maintainer of life.”
– John Baines, The Stellar Man