21st Century Man

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." - Henri-Louis Bergson

One of the greatest philosophers of the last century, Manly Palmer Hall was often labeled as a teacher of one or another of the individual types of philosophies he built a library to house.

Yet he was not a single minded man, nor a man who espoused any one philosophy over another. He did as we all should do. He studied all philosophies, all religions, all cultures and thought for himself, then developing his own opinions and teachings for the benefit of all the students of his works.

I sincerely wish I had discovered his teaching years ago.

From the site for this great library:

"The 1920s and 1930s were times of great religious, philosophical, and spiritual renewal and discovery in America-times much like our own. A number of outstanding teachers emerged from this period.

Born on March 18, 1901 in Peterborough, Ontario, Manly Palmer Hall was raised by his maternal grandmother who brought him to the United States when he was very young. From an early age, Mr. Hall studied the full range of the world's ancient wisdom traditions. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he concluded that wisdom was not to be found on only one path or in only one religion. Instead, he saw wisdom as the highest realm where philosophy, religion, and science come together without boundaries. Barely twenty years old, the gifted young man began his public career in the fall of 1920 when he was invited to speak to a small group in a room over a bank in Santa Monica, California on the subject of reincarnation. The following year he was asked to hold a lecture program in Los Angeles and continued teaching and writing for another six decades. He showed thousands how universal wisdom could be found in the myths, mysteries, and symbols of the ancient Western Mystery teachings and how to embody this wisdom in their own lives. Once when a young student asked him to autograph one of his books, he wrote the following:

"To learn is to live, to study is to grow, and growth is the measurement of life. The mind must be taught to think, the heart to feel, and the hands to labor. When these have been educated to their highest point, then is the time to offer them to the service of their fellowman, not before."

You can read the rest of Mr. Hall's biography on site of the great library he founded in 1934, at the link below.