Theos-Talk Archives (November 2005 Message tt00222)

11/30/2005 5:11 AM

Dear Friends:

Considering ISIS UNVEILED may we offer extracts from THEOSOPHY magazine Vol.
5 for consideration: :

Notes on A STUDY OF ISIS UNVEILED 

	

In Isis Unveiled the explanations of a hundred mysteries lie but half
buried, only waiting for the application of intelligence guided by a little
Occult knowledge to come out into the light of day. -- H. P.
BLAVATSKY


ISIS UNVEILED is the first published work of H. P. Blavatsky. It was issued
at New York by the publishing house of J. W. Bouton in the fall of 1877. 

The plates were stereotyped and in all six numbered editions have been
issued with the Bouton imprint at varying dates down to 1895. All these
editions are identical except that after the fourth edition a new portrait
of Madame Blavatsky was used for the frontispiece of the first volume. 

Subsequently, the Bouton plates came into the possession of Madam Katherine
Tingley and were used for the "Point Loma Edition" of Isis Unveiled, with
such inserts and changes as that edition contains. 

Another edition of Isis Unveiled was issued in London in 1911 by the
Theosophical Publishing Society, affiliated with the Theosophical society of
which Mrs. Annie Besant is President. This edition has the same pagings as
the original Bouton editions, but, being reset throughout, is authentic and
accurate only to the extent that it faithfully reproduces the original text.


The Bouton editions of Isis Unveiled are now, of course, out of print.
[Note: Since 1931 a Photographic facsimile Original Edition, has been
available through THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY, at www.ULT.org ] 

Isis Unveiled is H.P.B.'s first gift to Humanity. In many respects it is her
greatest. It is the first direct communication from the Masters of Wisdom to
the world of men in many, many centuries. 

It constitutes Their invitation to all who will listen, to enter upon the
study of the Spirit and Nature with Those who know how to teach. It is
intended to convey information and do a work of clearance for the individual
student, without which he cannot make true progress, and without which Their
subsequent Teachings cannot be properly availed of. 

Nature's modes and actions do not obey the whims or the mandates of the
individual. The student succeeds only as he waits upon and studies nature in
her operations. The laws and processes of the higher nature are the same.
They can only be successfully studied in their manifestation, and these do
not conform to the prejudices or the preconceptions of the would-be neophyte
in their mysteries. 

More than once, in later years, H.P.B. threw out hints about Isis. These
hints, like the book itself, were addressed to the intuition and not to the
curiosity of the reader. Thus, writing in The Theosophist in November, 1882,
five years after the publication of Isis, she said, in the form of a mere
obiter dictum: 

In Isis the explanations of a hundred mysteries lie but half buried ... only
waiting for the application of intelligence guided by a little Occult
knowledge to come out into the light of day.

This was written and published in India -- on the other side of the world
from New York. Nearly eight years later, in May, 1891 -- and again on the
other side of the world from India -- she gave a final statement in regard
to Isis in her article, "My Books," printed in Lucifer at London. This was
written a few days before her death, when she knew she was going, and was
not printed till after her departure from the body. It ought, therefore, to
bear an especial significance to all who believe in her sincerity and good
faith. This is what she said: 

"I maintain that Isis contains a mass of original and never hitherto
divulged information on occult subjects.... I defend the ideas and teachings
in it, with no fear of being charged with conceit, since neither ideas nor
teaching are mine, as I have always declared; and I maintain that both are
of the greatest value to mystics and students of Theosophy... 

Every word of information found in this work or in my later writings, comes
from the teachings of our Eastern Masters, and ... many a passage in these
works has been written by me under their dictation. "

Almost numberless are the false charges that have been made against H.P.B.
and against Isis Unveiled. These are constantly being revived by new
generations of writers, theosophical and otherwise. They rest upon malice,
conceit or ignorance. Few indeed, even among earnest and sincere students,
have taken the trouble to get the facts, and fewer still have made diligent
study of the work itself. 

It is human nature to desire to reap where we have not sown. It is so much
easier to take things at second-hand. Yet the very first lesson in Occultism
is accuracy as to the facts. And again, students often begin with The Secret
Doctrine, which they read upside down, without aim or direction, because
they have neither undergone the necessary preliminary study and training,
nor established a connection. Making no headway, they fall easily prey to
the thousand and one claims as to teachers and teachings. Seeking something
easy and promising, they go far astray in blind paths -- or worse. 

Not for naught nor in lightness did H.P.B. write on the title page of Isis
that it is a Master Key to the mysteries that encompass the two greatest
problems with which the human mind has wrestled in all ages -- Science and
Theology. 

We propose, therefore, in perseverance of a most solemn and sacred
self-imposed obligation to our fellow students of all organizations and of
none, to take up for consideration some of the teachings in Isis Unveiled.
If our fellow students everywhere will join with us in the work, and foster
it with their study, their thought, their questions and their contributions,
we do not doubt that we will all make discoveries of great value, and be
doubly enriched -- enriched in what we achieve for others, and enriched in
what we achieve for ourselves. 

For the differences that separate us, weakening each, and dividing the power
of all to help on the progress of the race, are due to our ignorance and
misconceptions. And these, in turn, are due to our neglect to study and
apply what the Masters have recorded for our instruction and guidance. 

If H.P.B. was the Agent of Masters, and did Their work, what She has left
of record must be a true guide for every student in any and every
difficulty, and must have been recorded for that very purpose. That she was
Their Agent is shown by the Message she brought, by her life, by her word,
and by Theirs. To suppose that anything she wrote can be neglected, cast
aside, explained away, or rejected, is to affirm that the Masters are as
weak, as impotent and as unreliable as human nature. 

We believe that the more we study Isis Unveiled, the more will our
conviction be strengthened in Theosophy, in Masters, and in H.P.B., Their
Messenger. We believe that only by such study will our present differences
be dissolved, and that unity of aim, purpose and teaching obtain among all
students of Theosophy that assuredly obtains among the Masters of Wisdom.  

In that profound conviction we undertake our present task: one more link in
the chain of effort to "teach, preach, and above all, practise Theosophy."
May Ishwara be near! 
 
"My Books" reprinted in HPB Articles, Vol. I p. 475, and in 
Blavatsky: COLLECTED WORKS ; Manila THEOSOPHICAL CLASSICS a CD .

------------

ADEPTS AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE

The accompanying article is made up of textual extracts from Isis Unveiled,
topically and sequentially arranged. 

FROM the first ages of man the fundamental truths of all that we are
permitted to know on earth was in the safe keeping of the adepts of the
sanctuaries. These guardians of the primitive divine revelation were bound
together by a universal freemasonry of science and philosophy, which formed
one unbroken chain around the globe. 

The difference in creeds and religious practice was only external. Too many
of our thinkers do not consider that the numerous changes in language, the
allegorical phraseology and evident secretiveness of the old Mystical
writers, who were generally under an obligation never to divulge the solemn
secrets of the sanctuary, might have sadly misled translators and
commentators. The phrases of the mediaeval alchemist they read literally;
and even the veiled symbology of Plato is commonly misunderstood by the
modern scholar. 

Almost without exception ancient and mediaeval scholars believed in the
arcane doctrines of wisdom. These included Alchemy, the Chaldeo-Jewish
Kabala, the esoteric systems of Pythagoras and the old Magi, and those of
the later Platonic philosophers and theurgists, the Indian Gymnosophists and
the Chaldean astrologers. 

Formerly, magic was a universal science, entirely in the hands of the
sacerdotal savant. Though the focus was jealously guarded in the
sanctuaries, its rays illuminated the whole of mankind. Otherwise, how are
we to account for the extraordinary identity of "superstitions," customs,
traditions, and even sentences, repeated in popular proverbs scattered from
one pole to the other? ... It is in these ridiculously expressed fables that
science will have to look for her "missing links." 

Otherwise, whence such strange "coincidences" in the respective histories of
nations and peoples so widely thrown apart? Whence that identity of
primitive conceptions which fables and legends though they are termed now,
contain in them nevertheless the kernel of historical facts, of a truth
thickly overgrown with the husks of popular embellishment, but still a
truth? 

Even the so-called fabulous narratives of certain Buddhistical books, when
stripped of their allegorical meanings, are found to be the secret doctrines
taught by Pythagoras. What Buddha taught in the sixth century, B.C., in
India, Pythagoras taught in the fifth, in Greece and Italy. 

There are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of thoughtful and
solitary students, who pass their lives in obscurity, far from the rumors of
the world, studying the great problem of the physical and spiritual
universes. They have their secret records in which are preserved the fruits
of the scholastic labors of the long line of recluses whose successors they
are. The knowledge of their early ancestors, the sages of India, Babylonia,
Nineveh, and the imperial Thebes; the legends and traditions commented upon
by the masters of Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato, in the marble halls of
Heliopolis and Sais; traditions which, in their days, already seemed to
hardly glimmer from behind the foggy curtains of the past; -- all this, and
much more, is recorded on indestructible parchment, and passed with jealous
care from one adept to another. We must bear in mind that authentic
treatises upon ancient magic of the Chaldean and Egyptian lore are not
scattered about in public libraries, and at auction sales. That such exist
is nevertheless a fact. 

The keys to the Biblical miracles of old, and to the phenomena of modern
days; the problems of psychology, physiology, and the many "missing links"
which have so perplexed scientists, are all in the hands of secret
fraternities. 

No wonder that the Northern seer, Swedenborg, advises people to search for
the LOST WORD among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Thibet; for it is
there, and only there now, although we find it inscribed on the monuments of
the oldest Egyptian dynasties. 

The grandiose poetry of the four Vedas; the Books of Hermes; the Chaldean
Book of Numbers; the Nazarene Codex; the Kabala of the Tanaim; the Sepher
Jezira; the Book of Wisdom of Schlomah (Solomon); the secret treatise on
Muhta and Badha, attributed by the Buddhist kabalists to Kapila, the founder
of the Sankhya system; the Brahmanas; the Stan-Gyour of the Thibetans; all
these volumes have the same ground-work. Varying but in allegories they
teach the same secret doctrine which, when once thoroughly eliminated, will
prove to be the Ultima Thule of true philosophy, and disclose what is this
LOST WORD. Our scientists do not -- nay, cannot understand correctly the old
Hindu literature. 

They have a perfect right to the just consciousness of their great learning,
but none at all to lead the world into their own error, by making it believe
that they have solved the last problem of ancient thought in literature,
whether Sanscrit or any other; that there lies not behind the external
"twaddle" far more than was ever dreamed of by our modern exact philosophy;
or that above and beyond the correct rendering of Sanscrit words and
sentences there is no deeper thought, intelligible to some of the
descendants of those who veiled it in the morning hours of earth's day, if
they are not to the profane reader. No people in the world have ever
attained to such grandeur of thought in ideal conceptions of the Deity and
its offspring, MAN, as the Sanscrit metaphysicians and theologians. 

Verily the Christs of the pre-Christian ages were many. But they died
unknown to the world, and disappeared silently and mysteriously. There never
was nor ever will be a truly philosophical mind, whether of Pagan, heathen,
Jew, or Christian, but has followed the same path of thought. 

Who, of those who ever studied the ancient philosophies, who understand
intuitionally the grandeur of their conceptions, the boundless sublimity of
their views of the Unknown Deity, can hesitate for a moment to give the
preference to their doctrines over the incomprehensible dogmatic and
contradictory theology of the hundreds of Christian sects? Who that has ever
read Plato and fathomed his To On, "whom no person has seen except the son,"
can doubt that Jesus was a disciple of the same secret doctrine which had
instructed the great philosopher? For Plato never claimed to be the inventor
of all that he wrote, but gave credit for it to Pythagoras, who, in his
turn, pointed to the remote East as the source whence he derived his
information and his philosophy. 

The mass of cumulative evidence has been reinforced to an extent which
leaves little, if any, room for further controversy. A conclusive opinion is
furnished by too many scholars to doubt the fact that India was the
Alma-Mater, not only of the civilization, arts, and sciences, but also of
all the great religions of antiquity; Judaism, and hence Christianity,
included. 

And now we will try to give a clear insight into one of the chief objects of
this work. What we desire to prove is, that underlying every ancient popular
religion was the same ancient wisdom-doctrine, one and identical, professed
and practiced by the initiates of every country, who alone were aware of its
existence and importance. The proofs of this identity of fundamental
doctrine in the old religions are found in the prevalence of a system of
initiation; in the secret sacerdotal castes who had the guardianship of
mystical words of power, and a public display of a phenomenal control over
natural forces, indicating association with preterhuman beings. 

Every approach to the Mysteries of all these nations was guarded with the
same jealous care, and in all, the penalty of death was inflicted upon
initiates of any degree who divulged the secrets entrusted to them. There
was an identity of vows, formulas, rites, and doctrines, between the ancient
faiths. Not only is their memory still preserved in India, but also the
Secret Association is still alive and as active as ever. The chief pontiff
and hierophant, the Brahmatma, is still accessible to those "who know,"
though perhaps recognized by another name; and the ramifications of his
influence extend throughout the world. 

The secret doctrines of the Magi, of the pre-Vedic Buddhists, of the
hierophants of the Egyptian Thoth or Hermes, and of the adepts of whatever
age and nationality, including the Chaldean Kabalists and the Jewish nazars,
were identical from the beginning. When we use the term Buddhists we do not
mean to imply by it either the exoteric Buddhism instituted by the followers
of Gautama-Buddha, nor the modern Buddhistic religion, but the secret
philosophy of Sakyamuni, which in its essence is certainly identical with
the ancient wisdom-religion of the sanctuary, the pre-Vedic Brahmanism. By
Buddhism, therefore, we mean that religion signifying literally the doctrine
of wisdom, and which by many ages antedates the metaphysical philosophy of
Siddartha Sakyamuni. 

In the East, this science is called, in some places, the "seven-storied," in
others, the "nine-storied" Temple; every story answers allegorically to a
degree of knowledge acquired. Throughout the countries of the Orient,
wherever magic and the wisdom-religion are studied, its practitioners and
students are known among their craft as Builders -- for they build the
temple of knowledge, of secret science. 

The "wisdom" of the archaic ages did not die out, and the Gnosis still
lingers on earth, and its votaries are many, albeit unknown. Such secret
brotherhoods have been mentioned by more than one great author. If they have
been regarded as mere fictions of the novelist, that fact has only helped
the "brother-adepts" to keep their incognito the more easily. 



SPIRITUAL IDENTITY

THE Ineffable Name, in the search for which so many vainly consume their
knowledge and lives, dwells latent in the heart of every man. 

A man can have no god that is not bounded by his own human conceptions. The
wider the sweep of his spiritual vision, the mightier will be his deity. But
where can we find a better demonstration of Him than in man himself; in the
spiritual and divine powers lying dormant in every human being? 

>From the remotest antiquity mankind as a whole have always been convinced of
the existence of a personal spiritual entity within the personal physical
man. This inner entity was more or less divine according to its proximity to
the crown -- Chrestos....which, though it be subjective to the senses of the
outward man, is perfectly objective to the inner ego. Humanity is the
highest manifestation on earth of the Unseen Supreme Deity, and each man an
incarnation of his God. 

Is it enough for man to know that he exists? Is it enough to be formed a
human being to enable him to deserve the appellation of MAN? To become a
genuine spiritual entity, which that designation implies, man must first
create himself anew, so to speak, i.e., thoroughly eliminate from his mind
and spirit, not only the dominating influence of selfishness and other
impurity, but also the infection of superstition and prejudice. 

When, years ago, we first traveled over the East, we came in contact with
certain men, endowed with such mysterious power and such profound knowledge
that we may truly designate them as the sages of the Orient. To their
instructions we lent a ready ear. They showed us that by combining science
with religion, the existence of God and immortality of man's spirit may be
demonstrated like a problem of Euclid. 

The Oriental philosophy has room for no other faith than an absolute and
immovable faith in the omnipotence of man's own immortal self. This
omnipotence comes from the kinship of man's spirit with the Universal Soul
-- God! Science, theology, every human hypothesis and conception born of
imperfect knowledge, lost forever their authoritative character in our
sight. 

Such knowledge is priceless; and it has been hidden only from those who
overlooked it, derided it, or denied its existence. Our Ego, that which
lives and thinks and feels independently of us in our mortal casket, does
more than believe. It knows that there exists a God in nature, for the sole
and invincible Artificer of all lives in us as we live in Him. No dogmatic
faith or exact science is able to uproot that intuitional feeling inherent
in man, when he has once fully realized it in himself. 

"There is a personal God, and there is a personal Devil!" thunders the
Christian preacher. "There is no personal God, except the grey matter in our
brain," contemptuously replies the materialist, "and there is no Devil."
Between Science and Theology is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief
in man's personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly
descending to the level of mere animal existence. 

Sincere skepticism as to the immortality of man's soul is a malady, a
malformation of the physical brain, and has existed in every age.. Those who
resign themselves to a materialistic existence, shutting out the divine
radiance shed by their spirit, at the beginning of the earthly pilgrimage,
and stifling the warning voice of that faithful sentry, the conscience,
which serves as a focus for the light in the soul -- such beings as these,
having left behind conscience and spirit, and crossed the boundaries of
matter, will of necessity have to follow its laws. 

We are at the bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state. Plato
divides the intellectual progress of the universe during every cycle into
fertile and barren periods. During the barren periods the spiritual sight of
the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the
superior power of its own divine spirit.

Reason, the outgrowth of the physical brain, develops at the expense of
instinct -- the flickering reminiscence of a once divine omniscience --
spirit. Reason avails only for the consideration of material things; it is
incapable of helping its possessor to a knowledge of spirit. In losing
instinct, man loses his intuitional powers, which are the crown and
ultimatum of instinct. Reason is the clumsy weapon of the scientists --
intuition the unerring guide of the seer. 

There are revelations of the spiritual senses of man which may be trusted
far more than all the sophistries of materialism. Instinct is more to be
trusted than the most instructed and developed reason, as regards man's
inner sense which assures him of his immortality. Instinct is the universal
endowment of nature by the Spirit of the Deity itself; reason, the slow
development of our physical constitution, an evolution of our adult material
brain. Instinct, as a divine spark, grows and develops according to the law
of the double evolution, physically and spiritually. It is the divine
instinct in its ceaseless progress of development. 

Within the limits of his intellectual capabilities the true philosopher
knows no forbidden ground, and should be content to accept no mystery of
nature as inscrutable and inviolable. 

Fanaticism in religion, fanaticism in science, or fanaticism in any other
question becomes a hobby, and cannot but blind our senses... When men say
they are seeking the truth, they mean that they are looking for evidence to
support some prejudice or prepossession. 

There being but ONE Truth, man requires but one church -- the Temple of God
within us, walled in by matter, but penetrable by any who can find the way;
the pure in heart see God. 

The everlasting conflict between the world-religions -- Christianity,
Judaism, Brahmanism, Paganism, Buddhism, proceeds from this one source:
Truth is known but to the few; the rest, unwilling to withdraw the veil from
their own hearts, imagine it blinding the eyes of their neighbor. The god of
every exoteric religion, including Christianity, notwithstanding its
pretensions to mystery, is an idol, a fiction, and cannot be anything else. 

There never was, nor can there be more than one universal religion; for
there can be but one truth concerning God. Like an immense chain whose upper
end, the alpha, remains invisibly emanating from a Deity ... -- it encircles
our globe in every direction; it leaves not even the darkest corner
unvisited, before the other end, the omega, turns back on its way to be
again received where it first emanated. 

On this divine chain was strung the exoteric symbology of every people.
Their variety of form is powerless to affect their substance, and under
their diverse ideal types of the universe of matter, symbolizing its
vivifying principles, the uncorrupted immaterial image of the spirit of
being guiding them is the same...eternal truth can never be destroyed. 

True philosophy and divine truth are convertible terms. A religion which
dreads the light cannot be a religion based on either truth or philosophy --
hence, it must be false. The ancient Mysteries were mysteries to the profane
only, whom the hierophants never sought nor would accept as proselytes; to
the initiates the Mysteries became explained as soon as the final veil was
withdrawn. 

Kapila, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, Basilides, Marcian, Ammonius and
Plotinus, founded schools and sowed the germs of many a noble thought, and
disappearing left behind them the refulgence of demi-gods. But the three
personalities of Christna, Gautama, and Jesus appeared like true gods, each
in his epoch, and bequeathed to humanity three religions built on the
imperishable rock of ages. 

Seers, righteous men, who had attained to the highest science of the inner
man and the knowledge of truth, have, like Marcus Antoninus, received
instructions "from the gods," in sleep and otherwise. ...Skepticism may
sneer; faith, based on knowledge and spiritual science, believes and
affirms. 

Spiritual Life is the one primordial principle above; Physical Life is the
primordial principle below, but they are one under their dual aspect. When
the Spirit is completely untrammelled from the fetters of correlation, and
its essence has become so purified as to be reunited with its CAUSE, it may
-- and yet who can tell whether it really will -- have a glimpse of the
Eternal Truth. Till then, let us not build ourselves idols in our own image,
and accept the shadows for the Eternal Light. 

A man's idea of God is that image of blinding light that he sees reflected
in the concave mirror of his own soul, and yet this is not, in very truth,
God, but only His reflection. His glory is there, but it is the light of his
own Spirit that the man sees, and it is all that he can bear to look upon.
The clearer the mirror, the brighter will be the divine image. 

The profoundest and most transcendental speculations of the ancient
metaphysicians are all based on that great principle underlying the whole of
their religious metaphysics -- illusion of the senses. 

Everything that is finite is illusion, all that which is infinite and
eternal is reality. The objects of sense being ever delusive and
fluctuating, cannot be a reality. Spirit alone is unchangeable, hence --
alone is no illusion. 

The Hermetic axiom maintains that only the First Cause and its direct
emanations, our spirits, are incorruptible and eternal. Christos, as a
unity, is but an abstraction representing the collective aggregation of the
numberless spirit-entities, which are the direct emanations of the infinite,
invisible, incomprehensible FIRST CAUSE -- the individual spirits of men,
erroneously called the souls. They are the divine sons of God, of which some
only overshadow mortal men -- but this the majority -- some remain forever
planetary spirits, and some -- the smaller and rare minority -- unite
themselves during life with some men. 

Such God-like beings as Gautama-Buddha, Jesus, .....Christna, and a few
others had united themselves with their spirits permanently -- hence they
became gods on earth. ...They represent an idea of collective entities -- of
flames detached from the one eternal centre of light. 

It is by the spirit of the teachings of both Buddha and Pythagoras, that we
can so easily recognize the identity of their doctrines. The all-pervading,
universal soul, the Anima Mundi, is Nirvana; and Buddha, as a generic name,
is the anthropomorphized monad of Pythagoras. 

The immortal spirit overshadows the mortal man. It enters into him, and
pervading his whole being, makes of him a god, who descends into his earthly
tabernacle. Every man may become a Buddha, says the doctrine. And so
throughout the interminable series of ages we find now and then men who more
or less succeed in uniting themselves "with God" as the expression goes,
with their own spirit, as we ought to translate. 

Though the individual human spirits are numberless, collectively they are
one, as every drop of water drawn out of the ocean, metaphorically speaking,
may have an individual existence, and still be one with the rest of the
drops going to form that ocean; for each human spirit is a scintilla of the
one all-pervading light. This divine spirit animates ...the particle of
dust, lurking latent in it, animates man...This doctrine of God being the
universal mind diffused through all things underlies all ancient
philosophies. 

Men possessed of such knowledge and exercising such powers patiently toiled
for something better than the vain glory of a passing fame. Seeking it not,
they became immortal, as do all who labor for the good of the race,
forgetful of mean self. Illuminated with the light of eternal truth, these
rich-poor alchemists fixed their attention upon the things that lie beyond
the common ken, recognizing nothing inscrutable but the First Cause, and
finding no question unsolvable. 

To dare, to know, to will, and REMAIN SILENT, was their constant rule; to be
beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending were, with them, spontaneous
impulses. Disdaining the rewards of petty traffic, spurning wealth, luxury,
pomp, and worldly power, they aspired to knowledge as the most satisfying of
all acquisitions. 


(from a study series conducted in THEOSOPHY magazine; and courtesy of Wisdom
World)


Best wishes,

Dallas
 
================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 9:44 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: Reincarnation of Lord Buddha 

......... Anyone who has read Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky knows that
she took
seriously hundreds or thousands of claims of yogis and holy men, many of
whom she met and studied personally during her travels. The debunkders in
this list would not believe a word of Isis Unveiled, obviously, so why are
they here? Occultism demands an open mind at the very beginning.
.............


snip