A culture could be described as civilized if it contains a significant number of civilized humans. As such, there have been very few civilized societies, but quite a number of civilized individuals…In each era of human history, small groups of advanced thinkers (Perennialists) have pushed humankind forward, revealing what persons are capable of, while battling the forces of degradation, ignorance, and murderous tyranny. But the ongoing struggle against oppression is ultimately insufficient–as one form of tyranny replaces another in historic succession. Humans must at last attain the understanding and capability that will enable them to create a higher social order.
The only viable way for this to occur is for a Perennialist, totally positive group to constitute itself as a “saving remnant,” 3 separate from but related to the larger culture. This Perennialist saving remnant leavens 5 and fecundates 4 the larger culture with its higher knowledge and power, ultimately transforming the negative culture into a commonwealth. This actually constitutes realising a new world in the sense of making real or concrete, giving reality to, being fully aware or cognizant of a world that already exists as an Ideal or Form. This new world is composed of essences (Forms) that Plato and other teachers within the Perennial Tradition reveal.
A Perennialist group locates its Higher Being within a Higher Realm in a separate entity outside the larger, negative culture–even though its members may have their terrestrial being within the larger, negative culture. The Perennialist group then leavens and fecundates the larger culture, ultimately transforming the larger culture into a commonwealth culture.
“I have attained the capability of experiencing my own essence within myself, and for me this experience becomes enlarged into another, that in me and through me the universal essence expresses itself, or, in other words, knows itself. ”
Nicholas of Cusa, On Searching for God
“Essence- is the attribute or set of attributes that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the entity or substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity.” Wikipedia entry on Essence
“In the earlier degrees, the candidates were made acquainted with the human soul, pictured as a little bird-man in the system of hieroglyphs ; they solved the mystery of death. They learned that it was really disappearance from one state of being, only to reappear in another ; that it affected the fleshly body, but did not destroy the mind and the self. They learned, too, that the soul not only survived the destruction of its mortal envelope but progressed onwards to higher spheres.
“In the advanced degrees, they were made acquainted with the divine soul; they were brought into personal communion with the Creator; they stood face to face with the Divine. They were first instructed in the true explanation of the Fall of Man from his original spiritual state. They were told the inner history of Atlantis, a history so intimately associated with the history of the Fall. Then they were lifted up, sphere beyond sphere, until they found themselves in the same highly spiritual consciousness as Man had enjoyed at the beginning. Thus, while yet on their pilgrimage in time, they had gathered the spoils of eternity.”
Paul Brunton (1898-1981), A Search in Secret Egypt
“He attains to the knowledge of Forms in their purity who goes to each of them with the soul alone, not allowing when in the act of meditation the intrusion or introduction of sight or any other sense in the company of reason, but with the very light of the soul in her clearness penetrates into the very light of truth in each Form. . .”