5.
The Sabian Philosophy

The Third Axiom

All mastery of all things is possible to all men. This is the axiom of necessary initiative.

If philosophy is man's practical examination of his ideas, and religion his ritualization of his aspiration, science is his tireless and infinitely audacious multiplication and ramification of the skills with which he has endowed himself. Science affords the means whereby he has wrought the miracles of modern technology, and thus has seemed to place even the planet itself in complete subjugation to his whim. He has made a cosmic responsibility very largely his own, and current history is almost wholly the account of his struggle to achieve by the genius of his own effort.

To the head and the heart must be added the hands, or the works of everyday responsibility as a basis for the individual's perspective on his well-being. Differing from thoughts that must always be brought to center in his own mind, or from emotional experiences that carry him to the periphery of his concern over his relationship with his fellows, the genius of his creative contributions is that they can be stood on their own foundation in a cancellation of all dependence on himself and thus and in a curious fashion be given a life of their own.

The construct set up by God, or by the man created in His image, is as much an organic entity as the organism endowed with life by nature. It has its own center as the gift of its creator, and its effectiveness is furthered by a proper respect for the independent frame of reference in which it operates. This is the commonplace accomplishment that in primitive times or to untutored minds seems to be the sheerest magic. Here the divinatory techniques on which occultism builds so largely in present days are of the greatest value through the training they give in establishing these constructs of reality, and in manipulating the time-and-space lattice so that the results of effort may be anticipated with confidence.

The seer becomes a counselor, and the dedicated individual a partner in worthy achievement. The present moment, whenever there is a clear view of the potential in all things, provides an unlimited and continuing opportunity. The seeker comes into his own through an initiative that owes nothing to anything other than itself, once he understands that he can be said to be ultimately and solely whatever he may find himself to be in the essence of his own existence. His fulfillment comprehends and so at will may actualize the absolute illimitability of which in potential he now is ever conscious in the depths of himself. Infinity and universality do not comprise limitations that he must accept but rather reveal the limitless transcendence of time and space within which his self-expression creates the concepts for its own ordering.

Here is the Sabian conception of a pure science, or of human consciousness released to the full manifestation of its own creative genius.

All things are seen as related to all other things, and in consequence they afford continuous signatures of a potentiality inherent in the immediateness of every time-and-space relationship. The mind may be guided and the heart stimulated at every point of effort and progress, but the initiative is of its own order and its own making and therefore invariable in its roots and branches. Outwardly and in material things this determination to action affords an evidence of itself in the extent and form of its mastery of the physical world.

Man in his works, no less than in his insights and in his innermost and actually inarticulate faith, may find himself forever both indomitable in his ongoing and infallible in his realization. It is through the honesty of his self-expression that he is able to resist the infinite regression away from the immediate union of himself and the universe for which and in which he acts. It is then that his life in its contribution to his world and his fellows becomes a living of all-life under the Solar Mysteries.

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