QUOTE (jaylemurph @ Jul 2 2008, 10:29 AM)

Non-sense. There's not nearly enough pith and wit in the world. Especially in this thread.
--Jaylemurph
Non-sense is a keyword. You will know them by their fruits. See My latest blog with information by Manly P. Hall.
Well here it is...I will make it easy on you.
From: Secret Teachings of All Ages -- Manly P. Hall — “Universal and deep thought bestows amplified spirit in that it reveals the dignity and purpose of living. Materiality bestows death in that it benumbs or clouds those faculties of human soul, which should be responsive to the enlivening impulses of creative thought and ennobling virtue. How inferior to these standards of remote days are the laws by which men live in the twentieth century! Today man a sublime creature with infinite capacity for self-improvement, in an effort to be true to false standards, turns from his birthright of understanding--without realizing the consequences--and plunges into the maelstrom of material illusion. The precious span of his earthly years he devotes to the pathetically futile effort to establish himself as an enduring power in a realm of unenduring things. Gradually the memory of his life as a spiritual being vanishes from his objective mind and be focuses all his partly awakened faculties upon the seething beehive of industry which he has come to consider the sole actuality. From the lofty heights of of his Selfhood he slowly sinks into the gloomy depths of ephemerality. He falls to the level of the beast, and in brutish fashion mumbles the problems arising from his all too insufficient knowledge of the Divine Plan. Here in the lurid turmoil of a great industrial, political, commercial inferno, men writhe in self-inflicted agony and, reaching out into the swirling mists, strive to clutch and hold the grotesque phantoms of success and power.
Ignorant of the cause of life, ignorant of the purpose of life, ignorant of what lies beyond the mystery of death, yet possessing within himself the answer to it all, man is willing to sacrifice the beautiful, the true, and the good within and without upon the blood stained altar of worldly ambition. The world of philosophy -- that beautiful garden of thought wherein the sages dwell in the bond of fraternity--fades from view. In its place rises an empire of stone, steel, smoke, and hate--a world in which millions of creatures potentially human scurry to and from in the desperate effort to exist and at the same time maintain the vast institution which they have erected and which, like some mighty juggernaut, is rumbling inevitably towards an unknown end. In this physical empire, which man erects in the vain belief that he can outshine the kingdom of the celestials, everything is changed to stone, Fascinated by the glitter of gain, man gazes at the Medusa-like face of greed and stands petrified.
War -- the irrefutable evidence of irrationality--still smolders in the hearts of men; it cannot die until human selfishness is overcome. Armed with multifarious inventions and destructive agencies, civilization will continue its fratricidal strife through future ages. But upon the mind of man there is dawning a great fear--that eventually civilization will destroy itself in one great cataclysmic struggle. Then must be reenacted the eternal drama of reconstruction. Out of the ruins of the civilization, which died when its idealism died, some primitive people yet in the womb of destiny must build a new world. Foreseeing the needs of that day, the philosophers of the ages have desired that into the structure of this new world shall be incorporated the truest and finest of all that has gone before. It is a divine law that the sum of previous accomplishment shall be the foundation of each new order of things. The great philosophic treasures of humanity must be preserved. That which is superficial may be allowed to perish; that which is fundamental and essential must remain, regardless of consequences “