Authors : Kingsford Anna - Maitland Edward
Title : The perfect way or The finding of Christ
Year : 1891

Link download : Kingsford_Anna_-_Maitland_Edward_-_The_perfect_way.zip

Preface to the revised edition. As the writers rather than the authors — of this book, we propose — on behalf of a more ready apprehension of it, and the satisfaction of much questioning concerning it — to take occasion of the issue of this Edition to give a succinct account of its nature and import. That which The Perfect Way represents is neither an invention nor a compilation, but first, a discovery, and next, a recovery. It represents a discovery because it is the result of an attempt — proved successful by the issue — to ascertain at first hand the nature and method of existence. And it represents a recovery because the system propounded in it has proved to be that which constituted the basic and secret doctrine of all the great religions of antiquity, including Christianity, — the doctrine commonly called the Gnosis, and variously entitled Hermetic and Kabalistic. In yet another sense does The Perfect Way represent a recovery, and also — for ourselves — a discovery, seeing that it was independent of any prior knowledge on our part. This is as regards Faculty. For the knowledges concerned, although verified by subsequent research in the ordinary manner, were obtained solely by means of the faculty which consists in perception and recollection of the kind called intuitional and psychic, and therefore by the method which in all ages has been recognized as the means of access to knowledges transcendental and divine. Being fully described in the book (e.g. Lect. i. pars. 4-18 ; App. iii., Part 1, etc.), this faculty needs no further definition here. It is necessary, however, to state this in relation to it : That the value of the recovery of the knowledges concerned, great as it is for the intrinsic interest and importance of subject, is indefinitely enhanced by the manner of its accomplishment. ...