From Atlantis to the Sphinx by Colin Wilson Read Free Book Online

absorbed him for years: that of precisely what art represents .
    It might simplify the matter it we translate this into musical terms. No one has any doubt that the music of Beethoven is ‘saying’ more than the music of Lehár. But how would we answer a Martian who asked us: ‘ What is it saying?’ Beethoven remarked to Elizabeth Brentano: ‘Those who understand my music must be freed from all miseries that others drag around with them. Tell Goethe to listen to my symphonies, and he will see that I am saying that music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher worlds of knowledge...’ Beethoven had no doubt that his music represented knowledge, yet quite clearly it would be impossible to take a single bar of his music and declare: ‘What this is saying is...’
    Now, VandenBroeck had been influenced by a friend, Andrew Da Passano, who tried to ‘prove’ the existence of higher states of consciousness by referring to the work of Einstein, Bohr and Heisenberg. VandenBroeck had been reading Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematical and it seemed to him that his own idea about knowledge might be expressed in mathematical terms. Most knowledge is a function of the method you use to achieve it; for example, if you want to know how many people there are in a room, you count them, and the knowledge you arrive at is a function of counting. But, reasoned VandenBroeck, you simply cannot say that the ‘higher knowledge’ Beethoven was talking about was arrived at by some ‘method’ like counting or reasoning. VandenBroeck felt that this insight was an important breakthrough, and he wrote a short paper in which he tried to express this notion of a knowledge that precedes method in terms of symbolic logic.
    Schwaller had begun his book on symbols and symbolism by remarking that there are two ways of reading ancient religious texts: the ‘exoteric’ and the ‘esoteric’. The ‘exoteric’ consists of meanings, which you could look up in a dictionary or work of history; but this only serves as a foundation for the esoteric meaning, which Schwaller calls the ‘symbolique’—that is to say, a system of symbols.
    Clearly, Schwaller’s ‘symbolic system’ was what VandenBroeck meant by higher knowledge, the knowledge that comes from the depths of the soul, and is not achieved by ‘method’. Yet Schwaller appeared to be saying that this knowledge was not some religious insight—the equivalent of ‘Love your neighbour’—but is practical and scientific . VandenBroeck was so excited that he lost no time driving from Bruges to the south of France, and presenting himself on Schwaller’s doorstep.
    He found Schwaller living on an impressive country estate that left no doubt that he had a considerable private income. It was a curious household, made up of the tall, grey-haired, 72-year-old sage, his ‘psychic’ wife Isha, who made VandenBroeck think of a gypsy fortune teller, and Isha’s two children from a former marriage, Dr Jean Lamy and his sister Lucie, who had devoted her life to being Schwaller’s amanuensis. Isha assumed that VandenBroeck had come there to speak to her about her ‘occult’ ideas—an understandable mistake, since her husband was virtually unknown, whereas she—by reason of a skilful novel about ancient Egypt called Chick Pea —had a considerable reputation.
    VandenBroeck and his wife were invited to lunch, where Isha continued to assume that VandenBroeck was there to sit at her feet, and to monopolise the conversation. Yet the few words he managed to exchange with Schwaller convinced VandenBroeck that they were on the same wavelength, and that Schwaller had a great deal to teach him. He decided to leave Bruges and move to Grasse.
    On his way back to Bruges, VandenBroeck stopped at Lyon and bought a copy of The Temple of Man. Although slightly taken aback by the geometrical diagrams, VandenBroeck was soon absorbed in the first volume, which brought him a continual sense of