During a successful career as a protrait painter, Vera Stanley Alder began to investigate the Ancient Wisdom, and this revolutionised her life. She made it her task to simplify and summarize this knowledge, in order to present it to others. Since 1938, she has been lecturing and writing; demonstrating, as one reviewer has put it, ' a rare gift for condensing and synthesising the essentials of esoteric teaching.'

'A wonderful era may soon dawn when humanity will figuratively rub its eyes to find that blinders and barriers of so many kinds have somehow melted away and that it has learnt to turn its back upon the illusions of division, and seeks only to write and fuse all people and all activities into one coherent whole which ever becomes simpler and more complete.'

With such stirring words as these, Miss Alder offers us a guide to attainment through the path outlined by Ancient Wisdom, which she summarizes in relation to Man, comparing it with the discoveries of modern science. She surveys the philosophies of breathing, colour, sounds, numbers, diet and exercise.

Finally she discusses the functions of the third eye, astrology, meditation, and their ultimate aims.

Contents

Preface
Introduction
Part One
1 Things as they are
2 What modern science says
3 The secret knowledge
4 How we are made
5 How we are classified
6 Male and female
7 Birth, sleep and death
8 Secrets of breathing
9 Secrets of colour
10 Secrets of sound
11 The science of numbers
12 Diet and exercise
Part Two
13 The 'third eye'
14 First steps to mastery
15 Meditation
16 History of the wisdom
17 The present awakening
18 Dangers in the path
19 The summing-up
Bibliography