rev mario schoenmaker as esoteric teacher - realm-2… mario schoenmaker as... · rev mario...

Rev Mario as Esoteric Teacher

Rev Mario as Esoteric Teacher 1

Rev Mario Schoenmaker as Esoteric Teacher

Talk presented at Free Priest Retreat 19th November 2016

The last time I gave a talk was at Monika’s ordination. That talk was three minutes long. For those of you hoping to experience another three minute JR talk, I’m afraid to disappoint you, but I intend to talk for much longer than three minutes today!

This Retreat is probably going to be the last one in this format.

There will be plenty of other Retreats in the years to come, hosted by different priests as the need arises, but this is a wonderful opportunity for us to come together, not just the Free Priests of what we called the “New Expression”, but also to join with Rody and Peter, Free Priests from the ICA; and with Stephen and Helen who represent the Johannine Community and also with Elizabeth who comes to us from another group of Free Priests. What we all have in common is our lineage. We trace our expressions from the work of Rev Mario Schoenmaker and Rev Colin Read.

Mario and Colin created The Centre. This organisation was a

vehicle for the work they had to express within Australia and within the world. Mario came into incarnation with three major tasks or roles. The first task was to “Raise the Order of Melchizedek”; the second role to bring a new Christ impulse into the world. He was the individual known as the “Christ Bearer” for the twentieth century. On previous occasions we have discussed both these roles. There is a third task however which Mario had laid upon him. This was to be a teacher in the Western spiritual tradition.

Although Mario presented as the teacher, he would never have done

this without Colin. It was Colin who dared Mario to teach his real knowledge, and when Mario objected that his current congregation would all walk out of the church, Colin retorted, “Who cares? We’ll replace them with new, open people!”



Mario followed Colin’s advice; his congregation walked out, but

many, many more souls walked in, attracted by the power of the real spiritual teaching.

When Melody and I, with the help of others, inaugurated the New

Expression of the Free Priesthood, we wanted to follow as closely as we could the template Mario and Colin had set out with the ordinations of the first Free Priests. In the original priesthood of the Centre, the Liturgical expression, a candidate for the priesthood was trained with Mario for several years before ordination. Some of the new Free Priests had been with Mario for many years; but others had no experience of the spiritual teachings at all. Mario said at one point, that the Liturgical priest had to be trained before ordination; the Free Priest would receive their training after ordination. Melody and I asked the question:

“Do Free Priests need the spiritual teachings?” It took quite a few years for the answer to become clear. It is quite a

simple answer. It can be expressed in three words: “Yes and no!” Or we could say, “Some do, and some don’t.”

We spent a lot of time discussing how we offer the teachings to

“those who did.” Before we arrive at our solution however, I would like to share with you some of my experiences about spiritual teachers.

To be honest, as a young man, I was skeptical about the need for a

‘spiritual teacher’. My spiritual studies were focused on Easter traditions, especially Buddhism in its forms of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. Now both these traditions lay great emphasis on the teacher-student relationship. If you have read Yogananda’s classic Autobiography of a Yogi you will know just how deep a bond of love Yogananda formed with his spiritual teacher. Eventually I realised that I would need the guidance of a real teacher in order to go to the next stage of my spiritual journey. After a lot of thought it occurred to me



that I would not be likely to find a Zen Buddhist or Tibetan Buddhist teacher in Australia. Of course, this was in the 1970s - now you can find teachers of all sorts of traditions all over the place. But back then there was a definite paucity of candidates. Besides which I didn’t fancy having to learn Chinese or worse, Tibetan, in order to study more deeply. No, if there was going to be a spiritual teacher, he or she would have to be in the Western tradition.

The power of making a decision began to operate immediately, and

before I knew, Mario appeared. Now although I had never had a spiritual teacher before, I actually

had made a little list. This was a list of what I thought I should expect from the real deal spiritual teacher. My first expectation was about Freedom. There were too many accounts of spiritual teachers who used the relationship to bind pupils to them and deprive them of choice and individuality. When I heard that the motto of the Centre was “To Set Men Free”, I was able to tick that one off the list! The second item on my list was, “Listening”. If you think a spiritual teacher should dispense profound wisdom from a lofty height, then this might seem a strange criterion. Nevertheless, a real teacher has developed the faculty of listening to others to such an extent that they become able to listen to the soul. So Listening was high on my list. And in case you are wondering, Rev Mario had developed the ability to listen more than any person had have ever met.

Item number three: Speech. It doesn’t matter whether the teacher is

talking about something from the Bible, or what they saw on TV the previous night; what they say has to resonate within the listener. It is this resonance that shows the listener that they are being listened to. The quality of resonance could be described as “that makes sense to me”; or “I recognise that”. We have all had the experience of listening to someone philosophising at length and having the theories and concepts go right past us. Mario certainly ticked this box too. He was the most electrifying speaker I had ever heard. It also helped that at times he could pick a question right out of your thinking and answer it without



breaking stride in his delivery - woo woo as Grace would say! The final point on my list to tick off was “Lineage”. Lineage of a

teacher is very important in the East. For example a Zen teacher might trace their lineage from student to teacher back to a great figure like Dogen; in Tibet the teaching lineage might lead back to Milarepa and so on. My question was, “What was Mario’s lineage?” or “Who taught Mario?”

This question was answered by Mario himself in a very striking way.

But I shall come back to that. Before we tackle the question of Mario’s lineage, we need to look at

an interesting judgment that has been passed on Mario. This option is that

“Mario got everything from Steiner!” It is not necessary to go to the historical reasons this opinion arose.

It is quite widespread though. Recently Melody and I were granted the privilege of a visit by a real Spiritual Teacher. This spiritual teacher whom I shall call, “Bill” (not his real name) emailed Melody saying that he wanted his wife to have a reading with me. We knew he was a spiritual teacher because he informed Melody that he was a spiritual teacher and his wife was his student.

They turned out to be a charming couple in their late seventies. His

wife had a disability which I suspect derived from having to put up with her husband! After the Reading we talked with them for about an hour. Bill told me his history with his wife. He had only agreed to marry her if she took on the role of spiritual student. It was probably just as well for him she did, for after many, many years of dispensing spiritual knowledge, people had asked him to stop lecturing them and his faithful wife remained his one and only spiritual student.

Bill informed me that he had made enquiries about this Mario



Schoenmaker, and his friends at the Anthroposophical Society had informed him that Mario had taught some of Steiner’s teachings. I pointed out this was a rather strange way to gather objective information. Would he ask his Anthroposophical friends their option on his own spiritual source, Alice Bailey? Nevertheless, Bill continued on his way.

I went through my checklist, mentally. 1. Freedom - Nope Bill was all for ownership and control. 2. Listening - not to me, nor to anyone else, I suspect. 3. Resonance - Bill was completely overflowing with intellectual

constructs that he found fascinating and which he thought were deeply spiritual, but nothing he said made any sense to me.

4. Lineage - Bill’s training was from reading the books of various early twentieth century authors. Which I couldn’t count as lineage.

By the way, the great Chinese teacher Confucius had his own

criterion for what made a good spiritual teacher. A good teacher, according to Confucius is one who questions everything he or she teaches. On the other hand, a good student is one who tests everything he or she is taught.

To come back to the statement: “Mario got his teachings from

Steiner.” If you think about it, this question has another one inside it: “Where did Steiner get his teachings from?” Now it might surprise the Anthroposophical Society to discover that

Steiner’s teachings were not at all original to him. Steiner’s teachings on the four-fold nature of the human being and the stages of evolution of the world actually were sourced from Blavatsky. There is nothing wrong with this. Steiner was in fact, head of the German section of the Theosophical Society for several years.

We keep going. You can probably see where this is headed… Next



question: “Where did Madame Blavatsky get her teachings from?” Now this question has a very interesting answer. It is true that the

life of the ultra mysterious HPB is very difficult to unveil, but modern research has helped. In a very basic way, let’s split the teachings of Blavatsky, and the teachings of Steiner, into two. Blavatsky’s teachings on the seven incarnations or ‘rounds’ of world evolution and their sub periods and sub sub periods etc are given in The Secret Doctrine. The reason the doctrine is secret is probably because it is written in such an obscure way, that no one will ever be able to untangle it! Blavatsky herself said that the information in the book came from sources in Tibet, and we know that she did indeed spend time in Tibet.

The second facet of the teachings is found in her first book, Isis

Unveiled - a mammoth achievement which still today is worth reading. The descriptions of the astral, the etheric and the soul are largely written by her pet philosopher, Alexander Wilder, a very erudite scholar who traced the origin of these from early philosophers through the School of Athens in the fourth century. So This didn’t originate with Blavatsky either!

A statement like, “Mario got his teachings from Steiner,” is actually

a nonsensical statement. If the spiritual teachings could be encoded forever in a set of linguistic statements by someone, then they wouldn’t be spiritual teachings. The problem with the statement is that the form is being confused with the content.

Let me try and explain this in another way. Here is a simple diagram, the diagram of the cross. Think of it for a

moment as a graph. The horizontal bar represents knowledge. This contains the whole spectrum of knowledge from something as simple as knowing one’s name to something as abstruse as the theory of relativity. This is knowledge of concepts. We shall call it horizontal knowledge.



Horizontal consciousness also embraces every esoteric concept. Everything that Rudolf Steiner, Madame Blavatsky and Mario Schoenmaker wrote about is there. The vertical bar represents consciousness. At the bottom is the consciousness of rocks and plants and animals; at the centre we arrive at human consciousness. Above the centre point we reach into the realms of higher spiritual consciousness.

Now as we rise into higher consciousness, we understand things

differently. It is like climbing a mountain. The landscape doesn’t change, but because we have changed we see more. We could call this new form of knowledge vertical knowledge. Now what we want from a spiritual teacher is not horizontal knowledge. Our soul does not need more information about astrals, etheric, higher astral planes, the seven planetary incarnations of the world, the seven epochs of the earth incarnation etc etc etc. The soul needs to be lifted up into a higher understanding.

A teacher needs some kind of framework which others can share if

they are going to undertake this journey with an audience. Now I have no doubt whatsoever that Madame Blavatsky was a great clairvoyant and a great occultist. She certainly saw with her own perception and that’s why she became a force in the world.

I have no doubt that Rudolf Steiner was a great clairvoyant and a

great occultist. He used Blavatsky’s framework because his audience was familiar with it, but he certainly saw with his own perception and that’s why he became a force in the world.

…You may see where this is going … I have no doubt that Mario Schoenmaker was a great clairvoyant

and a great occultist. He used the framework of Blavatsky, Steiner and Heindel and others because he was dealing with an audience that was able to relate to it, but he certainly saw with his own perception and that’s why he became a force in the world…



A more fruitful question to ask is: “What is the point of difference between Blavatsky and Steiner; and

between Steiner and Mario?” The point of difference between Blavatsky and Steiner is Christ. The point of difference between Steiner and Mario is the priesthood.

***

At the end of 2011, Melody and I decided that we would create a vehicle for Mario’s teachings that would specifically work for the Free Priesthood.

Together we brain-stormed a range of ideas and came to certain

guidelines. We decided that this vehicle would go past the Steiner framework

Mario had used. In a phrase, we would ‘decontextualise Mario from Steiner.’ This vehicle for the teachings would be called the Way of the Wyse-Art, because it would be following the way not of knowledge, but of wisdom, which is the integration of knowledge with higher consciousness.

This would be a transmission of the teachings from the Free Priests

to the Free Priests. Because Free Priests normally live a long distance from other priests, getting together would rarely be an option, so we would work on a one-to-one basis, although the course could also be run in a group setting.

Mario’s friend the Swami trained her students in yoga so that when

they went out of the ashram they were able to set up their own yoga school. In the same way, we would offer to some of those who completed levels of the Wyse-Art, the opportunity to become teachers of that level in their turn.



In order to create this new framework for the teachings, we turned

to Mario’s lineage. You will remember that the lineage of the teacher was one of the

items on my spiritual teacher check list. I discovered Mario’s lineage on a particular day in 1979.

At this time I was doing astrology readings at the Perth Centre. One

day, Mario was waiting for his next client, and I was waiting for mine, and I had a chance to ask him a question that had been on my mind. “You hear stories of mysterious occult organisations in Europe and America which train and teach students. Is there any truth to these stories?”

Mario startled me by replying immediately. “Yes, these

organisations do exist, and I myself was trained in one of them.” He then proceeded to relate the following story. In 1951 Mario was

in Paris, where he was pursuing some theological studies. He had called a taxi to take him to his theology school, but while he was waiting on the corner, another car drove up. The driver leaned out the window and said, “Hello Mario, I’ve come to take you to your appointment.” Mario was a bit startled that the driver knew his name, but he got into the car.

After a while, Mario noticed that the car wasn’t taking him to his

Bible college, he queried the driver but the driver assured him that everything was in order and explanations would be forthcoming.

Eventually the car pulled up at an elegant house in one of the richer

parts of Paris. “Go in, Mario,” said the driver. Mario went in and knocked at the door. An old lady answered, welcomed him by name and invited him to come in. She sat him down on a bench in the hall and asked him to wait. He waited for quite a while. He could hear beautiful music playing, although he didn’t recognise the tune.



Eventually the old lady returned. “Are you all right, Mario?” she asked. “Yes, but what was that lovely music I was hearing?”

The lady smiled. “If you had not heard the music, I would have bid

you farewell and you would have been returned to the car to be driven home. But since you did hear, you are invited to come in.”

She opened a door to another room and ushered Mario into a room

lined with dark wood panels. A small group of people sat around a large table. Mario was asked to sit down in the vacant chair. “Welcome, Mario,” said the person at the head of the table.

Mario asked how it was they seemed to know who he was, and why

he was there. The leader explained that they represented a Lodge or Mystery School which was able to track the incarnations of certain souls and follow them as their life developed. “We have been waiting for you for a long time, Mario.” Mario was invited to the training school of this particular Lodge. The school was in Germany, and he would have to undertake the training for a year or more.

After Mario agreed to this, there was more conversation and then he

was driven back to his lodgings. In 1953, Mario spent a year in the school in Germany, where he was

given the esoteric teachings and practical understandings that would lay the foundations for his work as a spiritual teacher in years to come.

Now at this point you may say to me, “JR, this sounds like a bit of a

tall story!” I had the same thought myself. Secret lodges with clairvoyant teachers who would train you in spiritual disciplines did seem like a lot to swallow. However, I knew Mario to be invariably truthful, so it seemed unlikely that he was feeding me a line. On the other hand, he must have put quite a lot of trust in me to relate his spiritual history. So I decided to accept the existence of the Mystery School and wait for confirmation.



Over the years, confirmation came in quite a few ways. For example, I discovered that Max Heindel, the founder of the Rosicrucian Fellowship, had also been invited to the school. On the other hand, Rudolf Steiner was not asked to be part of the School, but the Lodge sent him two teachers to help him develop his own particular clairvoyance. I shall not go into the strands that came together to make Mario’s Mystery School a reality for me - but you may want to read a book called The Zelator, which describes precisely the workings of this lodge with branches throughout Europe and America.

So, Mario spends one year in the Mystery School. The question

now becomes, “What did this lodge teach?” for this now becomes the teachings that we need to pass on to the Free Priests.

To discover the teachings of the Lodge requires a bit of detective

work, for Mario, being bound by vows of secrecy, was unable to disclose much of his experience within the lodge. However, we can establish certain guide lines. At the very start, however, one point Mario made emphatically is that the Lodge did not teach Rudolf Steiner!

Here is what we do know. Firstly Mario called the Lodge a “Rosicrucian Brotherhood”. Now

today there are many organisations who call themselves “Rosicrucians.” I have already mentioned Max Heindel’s Rosicrucian Fellowship. Then there is AMORC, the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis created by Lewis Spence, also in the first half of the twentieth century, and many other orders and associations which have developed over the last fifty years.

Not one of these multitude of Rosicrucian orders have any

connection with Mario’s Rosicrucian Lodge. The term Rosicrucian in fact connects the Lodge to a certain spiritual understanding which has a long history. This spiritual understanding was made quite manifest in the Seventeenth century with the publication of certain announcements



and descriptions of a “Brotherhood of the Rose Cross” which created quite a furore. The actual existence of a real society behind the early Rosicrucian documents is highly doubted by scholars, but there are tantalising hints that behind the writers of these documents, there was actually a group of people who kept themselves hidden. Perhaps, an early incarnation of Mario’s Lodge.

So the question now becomes, “What are these Rosicrucian

teachings?” In one phrase we could say that the Rosicrucian teachings are the Western Spiritual Tradition plus Christ.

What we call the Western Spiritual Tradition really begins in the

early days of the Greek philosophers. It was the philosophers who clearly explained the difference between intellectual knowledge, the horizontal bar of the cross and insight, the vertical bar of the cross. We could say that the cross then, represents the whole of the Western Spiritual Tradition. The Rosicrucians took this symbol and placed a rose in the centre, to show that Christ had now entered into human consciousness.

With this understanding, we can separate the Rosicrucian spiritual

teachings, the teachings of Mario’s edge into two separate branches. These are theory and practice. The theory is what we might call the esoteric understanding of the human being and their evolution. There are four aspects of esoteric teachings:

1. The four-fold nature of the human being. The concept of the

astral as soul vehicle, can be found as far back as Plato (in the Timaeus); the description of the etheric body, aetherides, is found in embryo in Empedocles and was developed by the fourth century philosophers, especially Iamblichus.

2. The existence of the soul and the expression of the Real Self

within the soul. Once again, this is at the very roots of the Western tradition. As Socrates explains to the young Alcibiades in Plato’s dialogue of that name,



Soc. And can we find any part of the soul that we can call more divine than …

that which is the seat of knowledge and thought? Alc. We cannot. Soc. Then this part of her resembles God, and whoever looks at this, and comes

to know all that is divine, will gain from this the best knowledge of himself? Alc. Apparently… 3. As spiritual beings we evolve from incarnation to incarnation. 4. Christ is at the centre of our being. This is a very simple summary of the Rosicrucian philosophy. But

the Rosicrucians had another aspect to their teachings, a practical aspect. Rosicrucians were also alchemists, and alchemy is a discipline of creating change through persistent effort. There are four aspects of Mario’s practical training which he revealed in little stories over many years.

1. Reflection, and self-reflection was an ongoing and continual

exercise and expectation from his teachers. As one example, every day he had to write down every negative thought that had entered his mind during that day. I suspect that if I had to undertake that particular exercise, I might need a journal the size of Encyclopaedia Britannica!

2. Development of clairvoyance through specific exercises. Mario

once said, “You think I am clairvoyant? You should have met my teachers. They could project your past incarnations onto the wall so you could view them!” I have already mentioned Mario’s telepathy. He was able to communicate with his brothers in the lodge mind to mind. One day in Perth he was standing quietly when the voice of one of his brothers came into his mind. “You have been so busy, Mario,” said his brother, that we have been unable to get past all the busy thoughts.”

3. Discipline, leading to self-discipline was a priority. Mario was

once punished for an infraction of the lodge rules by being made to



scrub the whole of a stone staircase with a toothbrush. Feeling very aggrieved and irate, he finally got to the bottom of the stair case only to find his teacher had been waiting for the hour it had taken him. Mario said he looked into his teacher’s eyes meaning to give vent to his anger, but when he looked, all he saw was love, and this completed the transforming experience.

4. Initiation into the ‘secret’. Now an occult Lodge must have a

secret. You may remember ‘Bill’ the advanced spiritual teacher, who also proclaimed himself an occultist. He was very annoyed when I asked for the secret - Bill didn’t know that the word ‘occult’ means literally ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’. So an occult lodge has to have a secret. The secret however cannot be passed on through words, it has to be given by direct transmission. At the end of one year, the Lodge judged that Mario was ready to be sent back into the world. He went into the chamber to be initiated into the secret. According to Mario, this was something very simple. He was tapped with a wand. The next moment he was sent out from the lodge to make his own way within the world. Very quickly he forgot the whole experience, and the memory did not come back for quite a few years.

This brings us back to the Wyse-Art. If we were going to

reconstruct the teachings of Mario’s Rosicrucian Lodge, then we now had plenty of clues.

The teachings of the Western Spiritual Tradition originate in the

very beginnings of philosophy. It was Pythagoras who set the template for the lodge, requiring his students to prove themselves for some years before they were allowed to enter the school. One of the most profound statements of the Pythagoreans is that the universe is comprised of number. Aristotle (a previous incarnation of Rudolf Steiner) who was, in this incarnation, a very hard-headed and materialistic thinker, found this a ridiculous statement. How could numbers which are immaterial concepts create matter? The Pythagoreans were not talking about the external universe however, they were talking about consciousness.



The correspondence of number with consciousness became an important part of the Wyse-Art. Each WA level consists of eleven modules, from number zero to number 10. With the creation of the third level there are now three times eleven modules; the number thirty-three, or the life of Christ.

Another vital aspect of Western spiritual teaching is reincarnation.

Recent research has shown, rather shockingly, the idea of reincarnation did not arise in India and become transmitted to the West; the first writings which mention reincarnation are certainly the Vedas of the C6 BC, but in exactly the same century we find reincarnation stated in the writings of the Pythagoreans and Empedocles.

Mario of course was perfectly familiar with the ancient philosophers.

He left a huge hint about the origin of his teachings when he remarked once, “Plato was a great occultist!”

There are three other important strands which weave into the

tradition of Mario’s lodge: Alchemy; Tarot and Kabbalah. All these have found their way into the Wyse-Art.

These are the three levels of the Wyse-Art: Level One: The Mysteries of the Western Spiritual Tradition. This

level contains Mario’s teachings on the nature of self: how to operate from the level of the Real Self. Mario would probably call this the metaphysical level. In this level we create the foundations of the Temple.

Level Two: The Mysteries of Christ. This is the point of difference

between Steiner and Blavatsky. It is also the point of difference with most other Western occult orders, for example the Golden Dawn Lodge. Here we have placed Mario’s teachings on the nature of the Christ: how the Real Self becomes the Christ Self. In this level we build upon the foundations we laid in the first level.



Level Three: The Mysteries of the Order of Melchizedek. This is the point of difference between Mario and Rudolf Steiner. At the pinnacle of the Temple we explore what it means to be a priest in Mario’s understanding. It should be noted that Mario’s Lodge was a Rosicrucian Lodge, and not a Melchizedek Lodge. The understandings of this level are only found within the teachings of Rev Mario.

What is most important to Melody and me, is that the Wyse-Art is

not a spiritual theory; it is a spiritual practice. I have heard people say, I am a spiritual being, I don’t need to practice! I can understand that theory. On the other hand, in my nature I am a musician. But unless I practice, I will never become an accomplished musician - so it is with spirit.

In my inner nature I am a spiritual being. There exists a Real Self.

Now if we have to use the term Real Self, that implies there is a False self. And indeed, everyday consciousness, ego consciousness if you like, is a false consciousness. This false self is a projective consciousness. It projects the inner contents of the psyche onto the screen of the world and through this creates meaning. The most common projections are onto other people. To return for a moment to Bill, the Spiritual teacher; he had such a strong need to identify himself with this description that he could only accept people around him as ‘spiritual students’.

The false self creates its existence through judgment, emotional

reaction, and habitual thought patterns. As we grow older, it becomes more and more important to deal with this illusory identity. This is because there are only two alternatives in life. Either we free ourselves from this pseudo self, or it becomes more and more rigid and imprisons us within a caricature of who we are. A few years ago I met ‘Ern’. Ern was in his late seventies - so plenty of time to mature and grow. A successful business person, Ern had developed the habit of acquisition. Property, possessions, money - Ern acquired them and once he had his hands on them, he could not let them go. This became so extreme that after his wife died and his daughters asked him for some of their mother’s jewelry, he refused, because his ownership had come to own him.



Eventually however, we come to that point where we really can’t

‘take it with us’. Although we normally think this means that when we die we have to leave all our physical possessions behind, it means more than this, for we cannot take out physical consciousness into the spiritual worlds. It is only those few who have already surrendered the old consciousness, the old sense of identity, who enter into the spiritual worlds in consciousness and become able to be powers in their own right.

Quite a few of us have experienced the power of such an entry into

the spiritual worlds with the passing of Monika. As Fabian remarked, this Retreat commenced with the ordination of Monika who has brought quite a few people together at this time.

In the case of Monika, we were able to witness a transformation

through the pain of the illness. The instrument of the false self is the will and we watched as she laid down her will and surrendered to Christ, that is, the false self surrenders to the real.

Rev Mario indicated that often illness is given to us so that we are

able to make this transformation. He also indicated that we can attain the same transformation through certain spiritual practices.

These spiritual practices are of course, given in the Wyse-Art. But I

am happy to share with you the greatest practice. It is the Royal Road of spiritual achievement. It is the practice of self-reflection.

“That is too simple!” people exclaim. Now one of the weapons of the

false self is the ‘deflector’. The deflector is that part of consciousness which deflects us from serious self-examination. Here are some simple deflector mechanisms:

“That is too simple to work!” “We know all that stuff, we did it with Mario.” “I tried that once…”



“That sounds boring…” “Couldn’t we do some chanting instead?” Yes, anything but look at self. After a life-time studying Buddhism I

came to the conclusion that the Buddha said one thing: “Watch your thoughts!” Of course that was too simple for his disciples so he wrapped it up

in lots of esoteric sounding meditation techniques. Christ said, very pointedly to his disciples, “Watch and pray!” Too

difficult - they all fell asleep! Over the first level of the Wyse-Art we put variations on the

practice of self-reflection into action. The discussion material is delivered through a spoken CD; through

music; through poetry and through visual images. Art has the ability to bypass the mind - the deflector mechanism ignores art!

The material of the Wyse-Art is drawn from the background of

Mario’s Lodge and includes Pythagorean teachings; Alchemy; Tarot and Kabbalah.

The results of the Wyse-Art courses have surpassed our

expectations. Over the course of the first level we see thinking become clearer; emotions become lifted into feeling and people experience freedom from old reactions, anxieties and negative thought patterns. In effect - transformation.

In quite a few instances the transformation has verged on the

extreme, with life-crises exploding into being! At one stage Melody and I would just look at each other and say, “Another victim of the Wyse-Art!” Fortunately everyone is still with us - we have not lost a Wyse-Artist yet!



I like to think that there is a portion of Mario’s impulse in the Wyse-

Art - but that could be dangerous - he did name himself once, The Sledgehammer of the Lord!

A road map of the Wyse-Art might continue like this: From clarity of thinking and self-observation we move to real

clairvoyance. Until we see ourselves clearly, anything we see outside self is another projection. Clairvoyance is simply the state where we see clearly - and the first perception is perception of self.

If we continue we reach the state the Buddha called, “Direct insight

into the nature of things.” If we continue to follow the path, then we shall come to the

perception of Christ with our etheric eyes. We have, even for a moment, shifted our centre of being from the False Self to the Real Self.

As we continue even further, the experience of the Real Self, the

Christ consciousness, starts to happen more and more often. Life becomes clearer, and our life as a priest becomes filled with understanding, light and purpose.

That brings me back to where we started. Do the Free Priests need

this training? The answer is, if you remember, some do, some don’t. There are certain people who should not attempt the Wyse-Art. I

generally direct away those who are already on another spiritual path. For example we have priests who follow paths like the Tao, Buddhism and other forms of Western Occultism. To these I say, stay on the path you have chosen. You can’t mix and match - it creates spiritual indigestion! You will know if it becomes necessary to change your path.

There are of course, other ways to study Mario’s teachings. You can

be part of a study group like the one Fabian is running; you can read



his transcriptions and books and you can listen to his recordings. Last night I described the Free Priesthood as developing into four

paths: Vocation; Building; Art and Being. The priesthood will work through us consciously or unconsciously.

Mario’s work as teacher was to increase consciousness. A Free Priest on the path of Being, may be able to express their beingness by just being who they are. Or they may find that the Wyse-Art practices create a more deeply conscious state of being from which the priest can radiate.

The artist may find the teachings an obstacle to their own thinking;

or they may find their art is illuminated and taken to another level. The vocation-centred Free Priest may find all the extra work needed

just distracts from their focus on their own work and career. Or they may discover insights that take their work with others to a completely different level.

Finally the builders. The builders know what we are preparing for; they know what we

are creating in spirit. It is part of the task of the builder to continue the teachings so they can be passed on to later generations.

We don’t need to make things intricate and complex. One of the

most profound teachings Rev Mario ever gave comprised of four short words:

“It is just so simple!”

He said this when Christ appeared to him in the middle of a Centre

Reading.



After his enlightenment, the Buddha was walking down a road

when he was joined by a fellow traveller. After some time, his companion was deeply impressed.

“What are you? Are you a god?” He asked. “No.” The Buddha replied. “Are you a saint?” “No.” Was the answer. “Are you a guru?” “No.” “What are you then?” Queried the traveller. “I,” said the Buddha, “am awake.” It is the whole purpose of Mario’s teachings and the whole purpose

of the Way of the Wyse-Art that we might come awake. I would wish for every Free Priest that we too may awaken to the experience of Christ, and then we can say from deep within our self, that through all the challenges of the priesthood; through all the barriers we encounter within our life and our work; past all the wonderful subtlety of our spiritual teachings we also can say,

“It is just so simple.”

So shall it be.

rev mario schoenmaker as esoteric teacher - realm-2… mario schoenmaker as... · rev mario...

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