Everywhere in nature there is interior and exterior; in material forms, and immaterial conceptions; in physics and metaphysics; in arts, sciences and religions. It is not necessary to demonstrate this; the fact is so apparent. That which is interior is so from its essential nature. In the fruit the pulp is interior to the rind or skin, the seed to the pulp. The exterior protects. The interior is that seat which contains the valuable, vital and living part. The seed or the interior can only be reached through the protective exterior. In knowledge, crude opinions surround and preserve hidden truths. Those truths are stored up in the treasure houses of wisdom. Their custodians are those whose worthiness has been proven. Only those who have broken through the barriers, scaled the parapets and overcome the warders can be trusted as defenders. At different times, and in different places, from the treasure house, have been given to the people by those whom the Pharaohs have placed in charge, the necessary grain for food and seed. The seed thus given has been implanted in the minds of the people, and from it has grown the crop, according to the nature of the soil and seed; the teachings, though never the same in form, are always the same in essence, and are always imparted by similar methods. The lowest form of dissemination is by means of words carrying associations of ideas. Back of this form, is the cipher contained in the words, which as combinations of letters are complex symbols; back of the symbol is the sound per se, apart from its association of ideas; back of the sound is the color which sound always produces by correlation; back of the color is the numerical valuation; back of the numerical valuation the related state of consciousness.
Before written teachings came oral teachings; before oral, other forms. The Gnostics say that the superior creatures impart of their efflux to the inferior creatures when they — the inferior — adore. If we look upon adoration in its aspect of aspiration, and upon aspiration as associated with inspiration, we get a clue to the meaning of this statement. When we — the inferior creatures — aspire, then the superior creatures can impart to us of their efflux and we inspire from the higher planes. The creatures of these higher planes are the devas. In all the great religions the anagram was one of the most prevalent ciphers. Transposing the letters of the word devas we have the word vedas that highest form of instruction in which the higher imparts to the lower of its efflux. In the course of time, however, as by emanation the instruction took lower and lower forms the impartation of knowledge by efflux became the impartation by sound, the impartation by sound became the impartation by the written word, and so the devas became the vedas. This is why the vedas are spoken of as the leaves of the universal tree. They are such in their original devic form. The Upanishads are the keys to the vedas.
Looking for the interior knowledge of the Hebrews we find it not in the old testament, which is quite external in its nature, but in the Kabalah, the key to the old testament. The story of the creation, of Adam and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his twelve sons came from the East to the Jews through the Babylonian civilization. Adam is the ad-om, the first, ad, and the logos, om. Adam was thus the first logos, Adam Kadmon, the Adam of Adams, the logos of logoi. Abram is taken from the Sanscrit Brahm, and the wife of Abram was Sara (Saros?), as Sarasvati was the wife of Brahm. The twelve sons of Jacob are but euhemerizations of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the macrocosm from which we, the people of Israel, as part of the microcosm must have descended. These are, however, merely surface revelations. There are far deeper ones some of which can never be found in the Kabalah itself, excepting with extraneous suggestion. Every letter in the Hebrew language is both a form, a symbol, and a number. Thus Aleph is the horns of a bull; Beth a House, Gimel a serpent, and so on. Also each letter has a number corresponding to it. The use of these corresponding numbers gives mathematical formulas. These are expounded in the Sepher Jezirah. Sepher is the same as our word cipher, the s-ph-ra tallying with our c-ph-r. In this system of numbers the naught precedes the enumeration. It is Ainsoph, the limitless, the boundless light, the infinite. It is in no sense creative, the true Kabalistic teachings not admitting of creation in the sense of production of something from nothing. It is, however, that from which emanation takes place. It is from it that the Sephiroth emanate. These are grouped in triads, the upper sephirothal triad being in the Archetypal World. In the sephiroth we have the ten points of the Pythagorean triangle, the ten Prajapati of the Hindus. Only by understanding the different systems can we comprehend any one by itself; and yet the terms of one system are not translatable literally from one to the other. It is like the translation of ideas from language to language. To make a good translation more than the dictionary values of the words must be understood, and much freedom must be used.
In some of the names of the creative entities there are proofs of the profundity of the learning of the old Kabalists. The numerical equivalent of Alhim or Elohim, who created man in their image, is 13514. Considering these numbers anagramatically, as the letters in the words devas and vedas have already been considered, we have the relationship of diameter to circumference 3.1415. This exactly expresses one of the aspects of the Elohim. It is through them that the finite is related to the infinite, the diameter to the circumference, the 1 to the 3.1415. This also is true of man made in their image. Equally interesting is one of the Kabalistic names of God — God as revealed to Moses. Its numerical equivalent is 543. 5, 4, 3 are the basic numbers of manifestation. In plane geometry they are the pentagon, the square and the triangle. On these forms are built up the fundamental figures of solid geometry. 5, 4, 3, also gives the multiple and separate parts of 4,320,000, the maha-yuga; of 360, the number of degrees in a circle; of 86,400, the number of seconds in a day, of the 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40 and 45 vibrations of the musical scale, of the 12 signs of the Zodiac, of the 12 inches in a foot, of the number of degrees in the tetrahedron, the cube and the dodecahedron, of the number of degrees in the triangle, the square, the pentagon and the hexagon, and the relationship of the simplest right angle triangle which gives the most complexity in whole numbers, the one whose hypothenuse is five and two sides four and three respectively. But Moses saw God backward, or from behind, that is the 5 preceding the 4 and the 3 following. This is precisely what does happen when man seeks to know the divine or fundamental. First he perceives through his five senses the exterior manifestations, later he rises until he unites himself with the trinity, the three in one, and so cognizes the interior manifestations. Moses, himself, in numerical equivalents was 345. That is from the trinity emanated by degrees that which became the pentagon or five-fold, five-sensed man. Thus all through these old, old teachings runs the marvelous story of creation by emanation, of transmutations, of successive objectivizations. The grand cycles are changing once again, and man begins to look back to the source from whence he came. From the five, through the four, the three, the two (the pairs of opposites) he is reaching towards the one ray, and through it towards the luminous ocean which is neither one nor many, but the shoreless ocean of infinite being from which all came and to which all must return.
The subject could be continued indefinitely. Suffice it, however, that there is in these old books, the Kabalah, the Upanishads, the Vedas, and the rest, many a key which will unlock store- houses of knowledge which cannot be entered otherwise excepting by long, weary years of hard unremitting labor and study.