The Secret School Of Wisdom - The Authentic Rituals and Doctrines of the Illuminati

1. True wealth is found in simplicity and the reduction of physical wants

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Voluntary poverty as liberation. Thoreau argues that the pursuit of material possessions enslaves the individual to labor and debt. By reducing our physical needs to the bare essentials—food, shelter, clothing, and fuel—we secure the freedom to pursue intellectual and spiritual growth. He believes that the luxuries of life are not only unnecessary but are positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

The cost of things. He defines the cost of any item as the amount of life required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. Working for decades to pay off an elaborate house or fashionable wardrobe is a poor trade that leaves men "quietly desperate." Most men labor under a mistake, plowing their best years into the soil for compost.

Practical minimalism. To demonstrate this, Thoreau built his own cabin at Walden Pond for a mere twenty-eight dollars and found that working only six weeks a year was sufficient to meet all his living expenses. He proved that a man can live on incredibly little and still maintain health and strength.

• Food: Simple diet of beans, rice, rye, and Indian meal.
• Shelter: A small, self-built cabin of recycled materials.
• Clothing: Practical, unpatched garments chosen for utility over fashion.
• Furniture: A bed, a table, a desk, and three chairs.

2. Deliberate living requires waking up to the present moment

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Awakening the mind. Living deliberately means shaking off the mental drowsiness that plagues most of humanity. Thoreau asserts that true morning is when we are fully awake and conscious, yet very few people are ever truly awake to the divine life. To be awake is to be alive, and we must learn to reawaken ourselves by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Simplifying daily affairs. Our lives are frittered away by unnecessary details, complex schedules, and superficial improvements. To counter this, we must ruthlessly simplify our affairs, reducing our commitments to a manageable few. Instead of three meals a day, we should eat but one, and keep our accounts on our thumbnail.

Seeking absolute reality. Instead of chasing illusions, we must wedge our feet downward through the slush of opinion and prejudice until we reach a hard bottom we can call reality. We must spend our days as deliberately as Nature, refusing to be thrown off the track by every minor distraction.

• Morning as a sacred, heroic hour of spiritual renewal.
• Rejecting the frantic pace of modern technological progress.
• Focusing on the immediate, local environment rather than distant news.

3. Individual conscience must always supersede the authority of the state

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Conscience over law. Thoreau insists that we should be men first and subjects afterward, refusing to resign our moral judgment to legislators. When a government enacts unjust laws, such as those supporting slavery or imperialist wars, citizens have a duty to break them. Law never made men a whit more just, and blind respect for it makes people agents of injustice.

Peaceable revolution. True reform does not wait for majorities to vote for justice; it begins when a single honest man withdraws his allegiance and property from an unjust state. Going to jail as a tax resister is a powerful, peaceful way to clog the machine of tyranny. A minority is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

The state's physical limits. The state can only lock up a man's body, never his mind or conscience, revealing its ultimate weakness and timidity. When the state locked Thoreau up for refusing to pay his poll-tax, he felt more free than any of his townsmen.

• Refusing to pay taxes that fund unjust wars or human bondage.
• Recognizing that a majority of one is a moral majority.
• Treating the state's authority as impure and derivative.

4. True wildness preserves and reinvigorates human nature

In Wildness is the preservation of the World.

The tonic of wildness. Thoreau champions the wild as the source of all vital energy, strength, and intellectual vigor. Civilization tames and weakens us, whereas the forest and the swamp provide the raw, uncorrupted nourishment our spirits require. He believes that our lives need the relief of a wild background where the pine flourishes and the jay screams.

The westward impulse. Walking westward represents a journey into the future, toward freedom, adventure, and the unexplored regions of the mind. It is an escape from the exhausted, historical soil of the East into the fertile, wild promise of the West. Every sunset inspires a desire to follow the sun into a distant and fair West.

Embracing the untamed. We must preserve wild spaces and cultivate a "tawny grammar" of mother-wit rather than a purely civil, indoor culture. A truly good book is as natural and perfect as a wild flower discovered on the prairies.

• Swamps as sacred places of immense natural fertility.
• The superiority of wild, uncultivated thoughts over academic learning.
• The necessity of maintaining an untamed element within ourselves.

5. Society's obsession with business and money-making degrades the soul

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

The curse of trade. Thoreau laments that the world has become a frantic marketplace where people work incessantly merely to sustain a superficial existence. This constant hustle leaves no room for leisure, contemplation, or the cultivation of true character. He asserts that trade curses everything it handles, even when trading in messages from heaven.

The illusion of gold. The rush to find wealth, like the California gold rush, is a form of gambling that produces no real value and degrades the human spirit. True wealth is not dug out of the earth but mined from the depths of one's own mind. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer.

Working for love. We must strive to get our living by doing what we love, ensuring our labor is a vital, self-supporting function of our genius. The aim of the laborer should be to perform well a certain work, not merely to get a good job.

• Rejecting the pressure to conform to commercial standards of success.
• Recognizing that money cannot buy a single necessary of the soul.
• Avoiding the "tote roads" of conventional, unreflective careers.

6. Solitude is a fertile state of deep connection, not isolation

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The richness of being alone. Thoreau finds that physical distance does not make a man lonely; rather, true solitude is a state of mind where one is closest to the perennial sources of life. In the woods, he is surrounded by the infinite, friendly society of Nature. He never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The noise of society. Frequent social meetings are often cheap and wearisome, forcing us to rely on superficial rules of etiquette to tolerate one another. We meet too often, at short intervals, before we have had time to acquire any new value for each other. We live too thick and are constantly in each other's way.

Cultivating inner double. Solitude allows us to stand aloof from our own actions, observing our lives with the healthy perspective of a spectator. This conscious effort of the mind lets us remain uninvolved in the passing torrent of events.

• Finding companionship in the wind, rain, and forest trees.
• Recognizing that a thinking man is always alone, wherever he is.
• Avoiding the cheap gossip of the village post-office and tavern.

7. Reading classic literature elevates the mind above trivial gossip

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

The father tongue. Reading is a noble intellectual exercise that requires the same rigorous training and alertness as athletic sports. The classics, written in the select language of literature, are the only oracles that never decay, offering timeless answers to modern questions. They must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Rejecting easy reading. Most men learn to read only for convenience or to consume cheap, sensational novels that dull the intellect. We must challenge ourselves with the scriptures of the nations and the works of the great poets. Easy reading lulls our nobler faculties to sleep.

Cultivating noble villages. Instead of spending money on material luxuries, towns should act collectively as noble patrons of the fine arts, establishing "uncommon schools" for lifelong learning. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her.

• Reading the ancient classics in their original tongues to understand human history.
• Elevating local culture by inviting wise men to lecture and teach.
• Skipping the fleeting gossip of daily newspapers to read the "Eternities."

8. Nature is a living, dynamic mirror of our spiritual state

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature; it is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

The mirror of the soul. Thoreau views the natural world, particularly the crystalline waters of Walden Pond, as a reflection of human purity and depth. By observing the changes, colors, and cycles of the pond, we learn to read our own spiritual condition. A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.

The lesson of spring. The breaking up of the ice and the thawing of the sand in spring symbolize the resurrection of the human spirit. Just as the frozen earth melts and flows into beautiful, leaf-like forms, our lives can transcend winter's torpor. A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.

Universal innocence. Nature's wildness and infinite vigor reassure us of a fundamental, indestructible health that lies beneath the surface of human corruption. We need the tonic of wildness, to witness our own limits transgressed by a nature that is infinitely wild.

• The purity of Walden's water as a symbol of spiritual clarity.
• The thawing sand-bank as an illustration of Nature's creative laboratory.
• The seasonal cycle as an epitome of human life and renewal.

9. True reform begins with personal integrity and self-emancipation

Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Exploring the inner world. Thoreau urges us to turn our eyes inward and explore the undiscovered regions of our own minds. True adventure is not sailing around the globe to count the cats in Zanzibar, but embarking on the home-cosmography of our own being. Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you.

Breaking the ruts of conformity. It is dangerously easy to fall into beaten tracks of thought and behavior, conforming blindly to tradition. We must simplify our lives, build our castles in the air, and then put solid foundations under them. If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, he will meet with unexpected success.

Living by a different drummer. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, it is because he hears a different drummer; he must step to the music he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.

• Self-emancipation as the only true form of reform.
• Rejecting the superficial, outward changes prescribed by doctors and politicians.
• Advancing confidently in the direction of one's dreams.

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