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CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
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tions of human imagination and poetic fancy, and came, after a time, to be lost to view.
In course of time and the vicissitudes of human destiny temples and pagodas sprang up exhibiting these mythological conceptions of the mind, and the outer rabble were invited to visit, and, later even encouraged, to worship the man-made deities thus installed as objects of meditation and veneration. The outer rabble then had their turn. For with the inculcation of this impious form of worship which was a source of income to the priestly class, there sprang up a sharp division between those who held the secret, the esotericists, and the vulgar laity, the exotericists, who fed the former. The element of greed upon which the relation between the teacher and the taught rested was also not unproductive of evil result. In course of time the masses came to firmly believe in the exoteric faith which alone was known to them, and intolerance for an opposite view, which, later on, even led to bitter feuds and hatreds, began to be practised by men. The number of esotericists dwindled, as was inevitable, side by side, till at last matters came to such a pass that no esotericist dared openly preach the truth to the outside rabble at large. It was then that the wisdom of secret initiation came to be recognised by the "divines," and many institutions and lodges were established all over the land. They went by different names in different countries, but all aimed at the same thing-the resurrection of Life, the son, or the son of God, from the dead.
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