Lucifer/Vol9/Text
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Electronic journal edition: Texts were transcribed from scans of the original journal. Signed articles by identified authors with dictionary entries are linked to separate pages; unsigned materials, short notices and extracts are reproduced here in journal order. Links for H. P. Blavatsky lead to texts prepared by B. de Zirkoff in Collected Writings.
No. 49 – September 1891
1 The Editor does not hold herself responsible for any opinions, whether religious, philosophical or social, expressed in signed articles.
Our Ninth Volume
The crown of the Reformer and the Innovator is a crown of thorns.
All is indeed but one eternal Now – Past, Present and Future being but “three clumsy words”, “miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective whole”. “The Past time is the Present time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into existence, still is”, say the Scriptures containing the Prasanga Madhyamika teachings. Says a Master: “The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the Present. And yet, O Present Moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no parent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say, ‘I am the progeny of the departed moment, the child of the Past,’ thou hast become that Past itself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou are no more the Present, but verily that Future. Thus are the Past, the Present, and the Future the ever-living Trinity in One – the Mahamaya of the Absolute IS.” And yet though this be true, and Time but a succession of states of consciousness, we mortals are apt to note recurring anniversaries and to feel a certain thrill of remembrance or of anticipation when some date of an event, memorable as a landmark on life’s highway, reminds us, in however Mayavic garb, of what we call our Past. And so with this issue of September, 1891, Lucifer reaches his ninth birthday, to find himself orphan as men count orphanhood, but knowing that the author of his being is only behind the Veil; looking backwards 2over a chequered Past, forward into a Future that his eyes are not keen enough to scan.
On September 15th, 1887, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky sent out into a hostile world the first issue of Lucifer, with the declaration that “It is to bring light to the ‘hidden things of darkness’; to show in their true aspect and their original real meaning things and names, men and their doings and customs; it is finally to fight prejudice, hypocrisy and shams in every nation, in every class of Society, as in every department of life”. None can say that that declaration was not carried out to the very letter by the Founder of the magazine, its chief Editor. Sometimes weaker souls complained that the lion’s roar sounded somewhat too loudly for ears accustomed only to the purr of the drawing-room cat; sometimes a cry was heard that the lion’s paw struck somewhat too heavily. But never a one was heard to say that the King of the Desert shrank before danger of any kind, or smote one weak or helpless creature, or gave blow from malice or from personal greed.
For nearly four years the clear brain that planned, the brave heart that inspired, the firm hand that guided, were Lucifer’s strength and life. Many a storm beat in his face but the force behind drove him on unquailing. Turning neither to right hand nor to left for fear or favour, seeing friends and helpers whirled away from his side by the tempest, but always finding new comrades coming to him through the storm, during those years he battled bravely on, secure in the strength that had its roots deep where no foe could reach. Not for men’s praise but for Humanity’s service he had girded on his armour, and he knew with a certainty that no denial could avail to shake, that his mission was from Those Who sit serene above the jars and turmoils of Western life. And now that his guidance on the physical plane has fallen into weaker hands, his mission remains the same, and his courage is unbroken, because nothing but his own treachery can rend the tie that binds him to his Founder and to Those Whose Messenger she was.
The choice of the name Lucifer was characteristic. It was a name to scare the goody-goody, with its popular connotation of brimstone and lurid flames of hell. But the choice was carefully considered and deliberately made.
“What’s in a name?” asked H. P. B. in the opening sentence of her first editorial. “Very often there is more in it than the profane is prepared to understand, or the learned mystic to explain. It is an invisible, secret, but very potential influence that every name carries about with it and ‘leaveth wherever it goeth’. Carlyle thought that ‘there is much, nay, almost all, in names’. ‘Could I unfold the
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influence of names, which are the most important of all clothings, I were a second great Trismegistus’, he writes. The name or title of a magazine started with a definite object, is, therefore, all important; for it is, indeed, the invisible seed grain, which will either grow ‘to be an all-over-shadowing tree’ on the fruits of which must depend the nature of the results brought about by the said object, or the tree will wither and die. These considerations show that the name of the present magazine – rather equivocal to orthodox Christian ears – is due to no careless selection, but arose in consequence of much thinking over its fitness, and was adopted as the best symbol to express that object and the results in view.”
H. P. B. realised to the full the “preconception and aversion to the name of Lucifer”, and saw that its adoption meant “a long strife with public prejudice”. But such strife was a part of her public duty.
“If one would fight prejudice, and brush off the ugly cobwebs of superstition and materialism alike from the noblest ideals of our forefathers, one has to prepare for opposition. ‘The crown of the reformer and the innovator is a crown of thorns’, indeed. If one would rescue Truth in all her chaste nudity from the almost bottomless well, into which she has been hurled by cant and hypocritical propriety, one should not hesitate to descend into the dark gaping pit of that well. No matter how badly the blind bats – the dwellers in darkness, and the haters of light – may treat in their gloomy abode the intruder, unless one is the first to show the spirit and courage he preaches to others, he must be justly held as a hypocrite and a seceder from his own principles.”
Such was the spirit in which the first number of Lucifer was sent out, and such, in however smaller measure, is the spirit in which the forty-ninth number sees the light. To be faithful to a great ideal, to be loyal to a great trust, to commit all faults rather than those of hypocrisy and cowardice, such is the resolve of the present editor.
The position of Lucifer in the intellectual world is clear and intelligible enough. He is opposed to Materialism, as offering but a partial view of man and the universe, and as starting from the wrong pole – making “spirit” the product of “matter”, instead of its evolver and moulder. He offers a philosophy of hoary antiquity, but new in our modern West, based on the researches of Sages and Seers, trained to the highest point of evolution yet touched by man, and verifiable anew by each successful student of the ancient lore. He offers a science which treads avenues of research unknown to the Western World, and explores realms of the universe which the West either denies or marks as unsearchable by man. He offers a religion which outrages neither 4the intellect nor the conscience, one which satisfies the longings of the heart while justifying itself at the bar of the reason. And while to the public he thus comes with his hands full of gifts of priceless value, he bends low to whisper in the ear of the patient, aspiring seeker after the Hidden Wisdom: “There is a road, steep and thorny, beset with perils of every kind, but yet a road, and it leads to the very heart of the Universe: I can tell you how to find those who will shew you the secret gateway that opens inward only, and closes fast behind the neophyte for evermore. There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer; there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through; there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount. For those who win onwards there is reward past all telling – the power to bless and save humanity; for those who fail, there are other lives in which success may come.”
And now, for the ninth time, the Light Bringer, the bright, the Morning Star, starts on a fresh cycle of endeavour. His motto is “Loyalty to the Masters and Their Messenger,” whatever betide, let who will desert Them or betray. He exists – as do the Theosophist in India, and the Path in America – to help the Society They founded, to keep before the eyes and minds of men the reality of the spiritual life, and to aid in bearing forward, across the threshold of the Twentieth Century, that Ark in which the destinies of humanity for its first seventy-five years are shrined.
Though thou loved her as thyself, |
| Emerson. |
The Gods in form are many, not in thought.
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Some Words on Daily Life
[This article appeared in an early number of Lucifer, long out of print. Many will be glad of the opportunity of reading it.]
It is divine philosophy alone, the spiritual and psychic blending of man with nature, which, by revealing the fundamental truths that lie hidden under the objects of sense and perception, can promote a spirit of unity and harmony in spite of the great diversities of conflicting creeds. Theosophy, therefore, expects and demands from the Fellows of the Society a great mutual toleration and charity for each other’s shortcomings, ungrudging mutual help in the search for truths in every department of nature – moral and physical. And this ethical standard must be unflinchingly applied to daily life.
Theosophy should not represent merely a collection of moral verities, a bundle of metaphysical ethics, epitomized in theoretical dissertations. Theosophy must be made practical; and it has, therefore, to be disencumbered of useless digressions, in the sense of desultory orations and fine talk. Let every Theosophist only do his duty, that which he can and ought to do, and very soon the sum of human misery, within and around the areas of every Branch of your Society, will be found visibly diminished. Forget Self in working for others – and the task will become an easy and a light one for you.
Do not set your pride in the appreciation and acknowledgment of that work by others. Why should any member of the Theosophical Society, striving to become a Theosophist, put any value upon his neighbour’s good or bad opinion of himself and his work, so long as he himself knows it to be useful and beneficent to other people? Human praise and enthusiasm are short-lived at best; the laugh of the scoffer and the condemnation of the indifferent looker-on are sure to follow, and generally to outweigh the admiring praise of the friendly. Do not despise the opinion of the world, nor provoke it uselessly to unjust criticism. Remain rather as indifferent to the abuse as to the praise of those who can never know you as you really are, and who ought, therefore, to find you unmoved by either, ever placing the approval or condemnation of your own Inner Self higher than that of the multitudes.
Those of you who would know yourselves in the spirit of truth, learn to live alone even amidst the great crowds which may sometimes surround you. Seek communion and intercourse only with the God within your own 6soul; heed only the praise or blame of that deity which can never be separated from your true Self, as it is verily that God itself, called the Higher Consciousness. Put without delay your good intentions into practice, never leaving a single one to remain only an intention – expecting, meanwhile, neither reward nor even acknowledgment for the good you may have done. Reward and acknowledgment are in yourself and inseparable from you, as it is your Inner Self alone which can appreciate them at their true degree and value. For each one of you contains within the precincts of his inner tabernacle the Supreme Court – prosecutor, defence, jury and judge – whose sentence is the only one without appeal; since none can know you better than you do yourself, when once you have learned to judge that Self by the never-wavering light of the inner divinity – your higher Consciousness. Let, therefore, the masses, which can never know your true selves, condemn your outer selves according to their own false lights. . . .
The majority of the public Areopagus is generally composed of self-appointed judges, who have never made a permanent deity of any idol save their own personalities – their lower selves; for those who try in their walk in life to follow their inner light will never be found judging, far less condemning, those weaker than themselves. What does it matter then, whether the former condemn or praise, whether they humble you or exalt you on a pinnacle? They will never comprehend you one way or the other. They may make an idol of you, so long as they imagine you a faithful mirror of themselves on the pedestal or altar which they have reared for you, and while you amuse or benefit them. You cannot expect to be anything for them but a temporary fetish, succeeding another fetish just overthrown, and followed in your turn by another idol. Your Western society can no more live without its Khalif of an hour than it can worship one for any longer period; and whenever it breaks an idol and then besmears it with mud, it is not the model but the disfigured image which it has created by its own foul fancy and endowed with its own vices, that Society dethrones and breaks.
Theosophy can only find objective expression in an all-embracing code of life, thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of mutual tolerance, charity and brotherly love. Its Society, as a body, has a task before it which, unless performed with the utmost discretion, will cause the world of the indifferent and the selfish to rise up in arms against it. Theosophy has to fight intolerance, prejudice, ignorance and selfishness, hidden under the mantle of hypocrisy. It has to throw all the light it can from the Torch of Truth, with which its servants are entrusted. It must do this without fear or hesitation, dreading neither reproof nor condemnation. Theosophy, through its mouthpiece, the Society, has to tell the Truth to the very face of Lie; to beard the tiger in its den, without thought or fear of evil consequences, and to set at defiance calumny and threats. As an Association, it has not only the right but the duty to uncloak vice and do its best to 7redress wrongs, whether through the voice of its chosen lecturers or the printed word of its journals and publications – making its accusations, however, as impersonal as possible. But its Fellows, or Members, have individually no such right. Its followers have, first of all, to set the example of a firmly outlined and as firmly applied morality, before they obtain the right to point out, even in a spirit of kindness, the absence of a like ethic unity and singleness of purpose in other associations or individuals. No Theosophist should blame a brother, whether within or outside of the Association; neither may he throw a slur upon another’s actions or denounce him, lest he himself lose the right to be considered a Theosophist. For, as such, he has to turn away his gaze from the imperfection of his neighbour, and centre rather his attention upon his own shortcomings, in order to correct them and become wiser. Let him not show the disparity between claim and action in another, but, whether in the case of a brother, a neighbour, or simply a fellow-man, let him rather ever help one weaker than himself on the arduous walk of life.
The problem of true Theosophy and its great mission are: first, the working out of clear unequivocal conceptions of ethics, ideas and duties, such as shall best and most fully satisfy the right and altruistic feelings in men; and second, the modelling of these conceptions for their adaptation into such forms of daily life, as shall offer a field where they may be applied with most equitableness.
Such is the common work placed before all who are willing to act on these principles. It is a laborious task, and will require strenuous and persevering exertion, but it must lead you insensibly to progress, and leave you no room for any selfish aspirations outside the limits traced. . . . . Do not indulge personally in unbrotherly comparison between the task accomplished by yourself and the work left undone by your neighbours or brothers. In the fields of Theosophy none is held to weed out a larger plot of ground than his strength and capacity will permit him. Do not be too severe on the merits or demerits of one who seeks admission among your ranks, as the truth about the actual state of the inner man can be only known to Karma, and can be dealt with justly by that all-seeing Law alone. Even the simple presence amidst you of a well-intentioned and sympathising individual may help you magnetically. . . . You are the free volunteer workers on the fields of Truth, and as such you must leave no obstruction on the paths leading to that field. . . . .
The degree of success or failure are the landmarks the Masters have to follow, as they will constitute the barriers placed with your own hands between yourselves and those whom you have asked to be your teachers. The nearer you approach to the goal contemplated the shorter the distance between the student and the Master.
The Substantial Nature of Magnetism
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A Curious Story
Mr. Dunstan, naturalist, who has recently returned from Central America, where he spent nearly two years in the study of the flora and the fauna of the country, relates the finding of a singular growth in one of the swamps which surround the great lakes of Nicaragua. He was engaged in hunting for botanical and entomological specimens, when he heard his dog cry out, as if in agony, from a distance. Running to the spot whence the animal’s cries came, Mr. Dunstan found him enveloped in a perfect network of what seemed to be a fine rope-like tissue of roots and fibres. The plant or vine seemed composed entirely of bare interlacing stems, resembling, more than anything else, the branches of the weeping willow denuded of its foliage, but of a dark, nearly black hue, and covered with a thick viscid gum that exuded from the pores. Drawing his knife, Mr. Dunstan endeavoured to cut the animal free, but it was only with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in severing the fleshy muscular fibres. To his horror and amazement the naturalist then saw that the dog’s body was blood-stained, while the skin appeared to have been actually sucked or puckered in spots, and the animal staggered as if from exhaustion. In cutting the vine the twigs curled like living, sinuous fingers about Mr. Dunstan’s hand, and it required no slight force to free the member from its clinging grasp, which left the flesh red and blistered. The gum exuding from the vine was of a greyish-dark tinge, remarkably adhesive, and of a disagreeable animal odour, powerful and nauseating to inhale. The native servants who accompanied Mr. Dunstan manifested the greatest horror of the vine, which they call “the devil’s snare”, and were full of stories of its death-dealing powers. He was able to discover very little about the nature of the plant, owing to the difficulty of handling it, for its grasp can only be torn away with the loss of skin and even of flesh; but, as near as Mr Dunstan could ascertain, its power of suction is contained in a number of infinitesimal mouths or little suckers, which, ordinarily closed, open for the reception of food. If the substance is animal, the blood is drawn off and the carcass or refuse then dropped. A lump of raw meat being thrown it, in the short space of five minutes the blood will be thoroughly drunk off and the mass thrown aside. Its voracity is almost beyond belief.
The Great Renunciation
The Kabalah
The Seven Principles of Man
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The Mahatmas and Western Poverty
Those who feel so sure that the Mahatmas are doing a wrong to mankind by refusing to use their knowledge of natural laws for the production of material wealth for the relief of misery, would do well to reflect on the results produced in mediæval Europe when it was known that gold had been produced by occult means.
“Public curiosity was stimulated to the highest pitch; experiments were made reckless of consequences, and the spirit of avarice, bursting forth expectant, absolutely raged.”
Then came
“a spurious brood of idlers, luring on the public credulity . . . men of all ranks, persuasions, and degrees of intelligence, of every variety of calling, motive, and imagination, were, as monomaniacs, searching after the Stone”.
Alexander Sethon complained that he was hunted like a criminal:
“They who have not a knowledge of this art imagine, if they had, they would do many things: I also thought the same, but am grown circumspect by experience of many dangers and the peril of life. I have seen so much corruption in the world, and those even who pass for good people are so ruled by the love of gain, that I am constrained even from the works of mercy, for fear of suspicion and arrest. I have experienced this in foreign countries, where, having ventured to administer the medicine to sufferers given over by physicians, the instant the cures became known a report was spread about of the Elixir, and I have been obliged to disguise myself, shave my head and change my name, to avoid falling into the hands of wicked persons, who would try to wrest the secret from me, in hopes of making gold. I could relate many incidents of this kind which have happened to me. Would to God that gold and silver were as common as the street mud; we should not then be obliged to fly and hide ourselves, as if we were accursed like Cain.”
One can imagine the frightful outburst of greed, envy and hatred that, in our corrupt and grasping society, would follow any effective exhibition of the power of a Mahatma to produce wealth.
A Great Step in Advance
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[Look for the warrior…]
Look for the warrior, and let him fight in thee. Take his orders for battle and obey them. Obey him not as though he were a general, but as though he were thyself, and his spoken words were the utterance of thy secret desires; for he is thself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself. . . . He is thyself, yet thou are but finite and liable to error. He is eternal and is sure. He is eternal truth. When once he has entered thee and become thy warrior, he will never utterly desert thee, and at the day of the Great Peace he will become one with thee.
A Puranic Allegory
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The Beatrice of Dante
Dante then begins the story of his New Life by saying that he was nine years old when first the glorious lady of his mind appeared before his eyes, even she who was called Beatrice (the giver of blessing) by many who did not know it to be her name. She was not quite nine, and when he saw her, the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, trembled violently, and said to him (in Latin) “Here is a deity stronger than I, who, coming, shall rule over me”. And the animal soul, dwelling in the lofty chamber whither all the sensitive spirits carry their perceptions, was filled with wonder, and speaking more especially unto the spirits of vision, said: “Your beatitude hath now been made manifest unto you. . . And Love many times commanded me to go in search of this very young little angel”, continued Dante, “wherefore many times in my childhood did I go in search of her, and saw her to be of such noble and praiseworthy bearing, that certainly to her might be applied these words of the poet Homer,
‘She seemed not the daughter of mortal man, but of God’.”
Nevertheless, it was nine years to a day after their first meeting before Dante ever heard her speak, and then she only saluted him as she passed him in the street. It is after this second meeting that the poet’s love makes such havoc with his bodily health, that his friends, noting his weakness, ask him: “By whose help has Love done this?” “I looked in their faces smiling”, says Dante, “and spake no word in return”. And then, seeing Beatrice across a church one day, he notices a gentle lady midway between them, and makes, in his pretended devotion to her, a “screen” for his love to Beatrice, by this means keeping his secret for some months and years. Now the love of a boy of 18 or 20, whose only demonstration had been one salutation to his lady in the street, scarcely needed such concealment, and yet when this lady left the city, Love named to him another “screen”, and this second pretended devotion was so well enacted that people gossipped of it, and accused him of vicious conduct, so that when next Beatrice met him, she denied him her most sweet salutation, in which lay all his beatitude.
Passing over his glimpse of Beatrice at a wedding (where none but married ladies were wont to go) and the account of the death of her father 56 (the only realistic incident in the book), we come to Dante’s mention of his severe illness, on the ninth day of which he has a vision of Beatrice as dead, in many respects like the vision of her in Purgatory. Following this dream, comes his description of his last meeting with Beatrice in life, as she passes by him preceded by that lady Joan, whom he compares to St. John, going before the True Light, saying, “I am a voice crying in the desert: prepare ye the way of the Lord”. And then Dante declares that Beatrice should be called Love.
The narrative of the New Life abruptly breaks off soon after this, with the news of the passing away of Beatrice, which news comes to Dante as he is writing a sonnet in her praise. “This happened”, he says, “at the first hour of the ninth day of the ninth month (according to Syrian reckoning) of that year of the thirteenth century in which the perfect number (ten) was nine times completed”. And one reason why nine plays so conspicuous a part in her history, he tells us, is, that all the nine heavens were in the most perfect harmony at her birth, but “ the more subtle and infallibly true reason is, that she was a miracle whose sole root was the blessed Trinity”.
At this point the story of the Banquet comes in (as Dante said he intended that it should) to help out and corroborate the New Life. In both books the idea is the same, and it is a curious fact that neither in them nor in the Divine Comedy (except once where the rhyme necessitates it) does the poet ever use the word death in connection with Beatrice. Two years after she had been made “a citizen of the Eternal Life”, Dante says in the Vita Nuova, he first beheld at a window a gentle lady, who so comforted him with her pitying glances, that he thought of her with too much pleasure. By this gentle lady, he tells us in the Banquet, he meant Scholastic Philosophy, and for the next two years and a half he devoted himself to this branch of learning.
But in spite of its attractions, and those of the active life of soldier and statesman that soon followed, the love of his first ideal was still latent in the soul of the poet, and as the Banquet proceeds, Dante shows us how far beyond all science and all morality is the Divine Philosophy or Eternal Wisdom, which is full of all peace, and whose dwelling-place is that Quiet Heaven where the soul is at rest with the Supreme. So at the end of the New Life he has a vision, about the ninth hour, of the glorified Beatrice, clothed in that sanguine raiment in which she first appeared to him, and seeming as young as when he first saw her. And remembering the past, he grieves to think that he has ever been led aside by any other love, and all his thoughts return to centre upon their first beatitude. And he has another vision of Beatrice receiving homage “ beyond that sphere of widest range”, the Primum Mobile; that is, within the Quiet Heaven of Divine Wisdom and Peace. And after that other vision embodied in the Divine Comedy, he resolves to say no more of this blessed one till he can more worthily treat of her. 57 When Dante next meets Beatrice, on the summit of the Mount of Purgatory (in that terrestrial Paradise, explained by the Fathers of the Church to mean the contemplative life,) she says to him with keen irony, “How didst thou deign (being lost in the pride of learning) to come unto this Mount?” And turning to her attendant Virtues, she continues: “Not only by the influence of the stars at his birth did this man receive great intellectual power, but also by special gift of Divine grace did he become such in his new life that everything good was possible to him. I revealed myself to him in his youth, and for some time led him with me in the right way, but . . . as I ascended from flesh to spirit, and beauty and virtue increased in me, I became less dear to him, and he turned to pursue those false images of good that never fulfil their promises. . . . The law of justice would be violated, should he pass Lethe without tears and repentance.” And when he has repented, confessed, and undergone the double baptism of water and fire, Beatrice leads the poet upward from heaven to heaven, until St. Bernard guides him to the final Vision of the Divine.
In the New Life, the Banquet, and the Divine Comedy, the descriptions of Beatrice are almost identical with those of Wisdom in the various books of the Bible and the Apocrypha, which Dante was so fond of quoting, and he identifies Beatrice continually with Love, with Wisdom, and therefore with the Logos. In the New Life he declares her to be identical with Love, and in the Banquet he writes: “Wherefore it is written of this eternal Love which is Wisdom, ‘He created me from the beginning before the world, and I shall never fail’. (Eccles. xxiv. 9.) And in the Proverbs of Solomon (viii. 23) she, Wisdom, says, ‘I was set up from everlasting’. And in the beginning of the Gospel of John her eternity is openly declared.”
From these and many other passages quoted or assimilated by Dante, we see the deep hold that the Gnostic ideas had taken upon his mind, and the close resemblance that his Wisdom (here and in many other places identified with the Logos and the Second Person of the Trinity) bears to that spiritual intuition, or secret Knowledge of Divine things, common to mystics of all ages. The highest Good, beyond which there is nothing to aspire to, Dante tells us, is that blessedness (or beatitude) which follows the exercise of the soul in contemplation[1]. He has a vision of this beatitude as a child, he loses it for awhile in the busy whirl of the active life, the pursuits of the world, the cares of the state and the family, the duties of the soldier, the studies of the poet, the artist, the musician, and the scientist (for the many-sided Dante was all these), but at last the vision of the higher life, as he had seen it when a boy, came back to him, and he returned to the love of Divine Wisdom, that “ splendour of the living Light Eternal”.
“And thus it appears”, says Dante, in the Banquet, “that our beatitude, that is, this felicity of which we are speaking, we may first find imperfectly 58 in the active life, that is, in the exercise of the moral virtues, and then almost perfectly in the contemplative life, that is, in the exercise of the intellectual virtues; which two operations are unimpeded and most direct ways to lead us to the supreme beatitude that cannot be obtained here. below.”
The schoolmen of Dante’s time, who based their philosophical speculations upon the system of Aristotle, defined the intellect as the capability of receiving abstract ideas, the possibility of understanding, in short, and therefore this was called the “possible intellect”. It was compared to a mirror, and ideas to the reflections therein, and Aristotle was the first to recognise that as this faculty bore the same relation to pure conceptions that the sense of sight does to visible things, it was necessary to admit also the existence of an active principle which should stand to this in the relation of light to the sense of vision. This principle Aristotle called the “Active Intelligence”, and in the union of this with the Possible Intellect, is consummated, he said, the act of pure comprehension. This Active Intelligence is universal, immortal, perpetual; “the intellectual life through her is the greatest beatitude to which man can aspire; indeed, it marks him more than man, divine”. So that Dante was following his Master closely when he wrote: “In every noble soul is its own virtue, and the intellectual and the divine”, and again in the Banquet, when he speaks of mind as “that culminating and most precious part of the soul, which is Deity”. (Banquet iii. 3.)
Dante then, in identifying Beatrice with the Logos, with “that eternal Love which is Wisdom”, identifies her with that principle that Theosophists would call Buddhi, or Spiritual Wisdom, the vehicle by which the Supreme (or Atma) enters into and illuminates the mind of man. For to Dante, who followed closely the system of Aristotle, ideas corresponded to things seen; the intellect to the sense of sight; and the intelligence or intuition (“that most precious part of the soul which is Deity”) to the light by whose aid alone the sense of sight can perceive visible things. “In every noble soul is its own virtue, and the intellectual, and the divine,” and so (while realising that all such divisions are but varying aspects of the Consciousness, not different entities), Dante divides the soul into life, which is one in all things (corresponding to Prana); into feeling, which includes desire and passion (corresponding to Kama); and into reason (or Manas) which he divides into the higher and lower, the imaginative and creative, and the reasoning or logical faculties. “And thus”, he says, “the soul partakes of the Divine nature in the form of sempiternal Intelligence” (which we should call Buddhi), “because the soul, by virtue of this sovereign power, is so ennobled and set free from matter, that the Divine Light, as in the angels, can shine through her”. “And this Divine Wisdom”, says Dante, quoting from the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, “is the brightness of the Everlasting Light (or Atma), the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God”.
There could scarcely be a closer parallel with the theosophic ideas than 59 this, and many more such passages could be cited, both from Dante’s prose and his poetry. No less significant is that chapter of the Banquet (iv. 21) wherein he explains the conditions necessary to growth in spiritual knowledge as they have been so often explained to us, the absoluteness of the law that when the vessel is ready, it will be filled, and that if some are made to honour and some to dishonour, as St. Paul says, it is because they have made themselves fit for such various use. If a man purify his soul, “ he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work”. (2 Tim. ii. 21.)
“And if it happen”, says Dante, “that by the purity of the receiving soul the intellectual virtue be absolutely separate and free from any corporeal shadow, then the Divine goodness multiplies in that soul, as in a thing worthy to receive it; and further, it multiplies in the soul endowed with this intelligence according to her capacity of reception. . . . And some are of opinion that if all these powers should co-operate in the production of a soul according to their most favourable disposition, the Deity would descend upon that soul in such fulness that it would be almost another God incarnate.” (Banq. iv. 21.)
Not all the poetry and philosophy of mysticism embodied in Dante’s New Life, however, were sufficient to convince the world at large that it was the history of a soul that he was writing, and not that of a lover, and so in the Banquet (begun even before the New Life was finished, and left uncompleted at the poet’s death), he tried to be even more explicit. In the first part he declares his object in writing the Banquet to be twofold; firstly, to set forth certain teachings which he could give in no other way; and secondly: to clear himself from the infamy of being held subject to such passion as those who read his Canzoni (lyrics) might consider to possess him, whereas not passion but virtue was their moving cause. “And I say that Love held discourse within my mind, that it might be understood that this Love was born of the noblest part of our nature, that is, of Truth and Virtue, and also to exclude any false opinion of me, by which my love might be suspected of being a sensuous delight”. . . . “By my lady”, he says again, “I always mean that Philosophy treated of in the preceding Canzone” – that is, Philosophy identified there with Wisdom, “which exists above all in God, because in Him is supreme Wisdom, and supreme Love, and supreme Power, which cannot exist elsewhere, except as it proceeds from Him. Therefore the Divine Philosophy is of the Divine Essence, because in Him can be nothing added to His Essence; and she is most noble, because the Divine Essence is most noble: and she exists in Him perfectly and truly, as it were by eternal wedlock.”
Therefore I think, we may conclude, from Dante’s own words, that his Beatrice was the light of Divine Wisdom first made manifest to him in his youth, then for a a time obscured by the shadows of the world, to shine out more clearly than ever as he neared the end of his mortal pilgrimage. He 60 spent the last nineteen years of his life in loneliness and exile, occupied with his greatest work, the Divine Comedy, and writing at the same time the Banquet, a prose exposition of his philosophy, full of hints as to the hidden meaning of his symbolism,. so often and so grossly misunderstood. To a man whose thoughts continually soared above the earthly plane, whose very features bore such marks of profound study and profound sorrow, that the Florentine women pointed at him as he passed, and said: “There goes the man who has seen Hell”; to a regenerated soul who had chosen the contemplative life as his beatitude, what need was there of earthly ties? There is no occasion, I think, to stigmatise the wife of Dante as unworthy of him, because he did not send for her to join him in his exile: he had become a wandering ghost, wrapped in visions of another world, long before his body was laid to rest in the ancient city of Ravenna.
“And since God is the source of our soul”, says the great poet and seer in his latest work, “and has made it like unto Himself, therefore this soul desires above all things to return to Him. . . . And because her knowledge is imperfect, because she has neither experience nor learning, things of little value seem great to her, and therefore she begins by first desiring them. . . . Wherefore we may see that one desirable thing stands before the next one to the eyes of the soul, almost like a pyramid; for at first the smallest thing hides all the rest, and is, as it were, the point of the ultimate subject of desire, which is God, standing at the base of all.” (Conv. iv. 12.)
“Therefore” (says Dante again, in his book on the Monarchy) “the ineffable Providence of God proposes to man two aims; the one the beatitude of this life, which consists in the operation of his peculiar faculties, and is represented by the terrestrial paradise: the other the beatitude of the eternal life, which consists in the fruition of the Divine aspect, to which human goodness cannot ascend if not aided by the Divine light, and this is what is meant by the celestial paradise. To these two beatitudes, as to diverse conclusions, we must arrive by different ways.” And again, in the Paradiso:
“All natures, by their destinies diverse, |
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Laurence Oliphant
The story of the life of Laurence Oliphant, rich in event, full of adventure, in some aspects unequalled in this present century, is told by his relative Mrs. Oliphant in two volumes, well worth the attention of all who are interested in human nature in general, and in the delightfully fresh, brilliant example of human nature in particular, whose writings have fascinated the literary world during the last fifteen years.
But to those interested in the deeper problems of nature, and especially to Theosophists, the glimpses of his inner spiritual life will appeal most strongly. It is this aspect only, so far as possible, that I shall touch upon. Here I venture to record my opinion that Mrs. Oliphant has performed well and delicately a very difficult task. Not herself a sharer in his views, or even with a pretence of being able to penetrate them in any degree, her affection and admiration for the man, her recognition of the unselfishness of his motives, her sympathy with his standard of life, have enabled her to place before us an impression of his mind, which makes it possible for those who have studied him through his books, and who have a clue to the influences at work upon him, to fill in the gaps and to find great interest in so doing. It is true that the gaps are large, especially so far as the history of his connection with Harris is concerned.
Laurence Oliphant was from his earliest years a “Pupil of Life”, the “Darling” of adoring parents of cultivated minds and strictly Evangelical views. His father, to whom he was devotedly attached, confessed his religious backslidings to Laurence when the latter was ten years old; his mother sought for and encouraged a religious introspection that would have wrecked a mind less vigorous and lively. In the first letter quoted, after describing how “We generally have what we call larks at night. There are two boys here that are very passionate, and we like of course to teaze them,” he goes on to detail his besetting sins, some of which raise an echo in the hearts of all who remember their childhood. “One of them is my not saying my prayers as I ought, hurrying over them to get up in the morning because it is so late, and at night because it is cold.” The “Eye of God” took the usual gigantic proportions to Laurence that it does with any sensitive child who pictures its hideous unwinking stare.
As years went on, he confessed to finding the strain of religious thought hard to bear, and hard to cultivate in his busy life, and he discovered his great failing to be “a flexibility of conscience, joined to a power of adapting myself to the society into which I happen to be thrown”. His letters abound with references to his fluctuating religious condition; this busy roving life, putting him in touch with all sorts and conditions of men, opened his eyes to the hollowness of orthodoxy, to the distance that Christians have travelled from the ideal set forth by Christ. The worldliness of the “worldly-holies”, the “humbug” of the missionaries, are brilliantly satirised in “Piccadilly”, and he at length openly burst the “strait bonds of his mother’s belief”, and for some years, he tells us, lived in open infidelity.
But it is a curious fact that when religion became again his chief and absorbing interest, when he fervently desired truth, and to investigate the evidences of religion, and while the practical result of his investigation made, perhaps, his chief fame, his religious thought was the least 62 remarkable thing about him. Laurence Oliphant was no metaphysician. He yearned for the “Fountain Head”, longed “hopelessly to be assimilated with the Creator”, but this fountain-head and this Creator were no other than “God the Father”, God as a Person. God as a loving Friend was the limit of his imagination, and the evidence he seeks is all from good churchmen. He was a Scotchman, and like so many Scotchmen was naturally psychic; he was honest, practical, but not, in my opinion, independent-minded in religious matters. It is well to bear this in mind in passing on to the turning point of his life – the Harris episode – also the main point of interest of the book.
It is at this point that probably a difficulty arises for an outsider – by outsider I mean one who is not a Theosophist – in putting his finger upon the radical difference between Laurence Oliphant’s mysticism and Theosophy; especially if they have only read the vulgar outpourings of the daily press within the last few months, which might lead him to believe that it were possible to put Madame Blavatsky and Lake Harris side by side as guides and prophets, and that their claims were identical. It is difficult to convey in a few words the abhorrence with which the bare idea would be treated by Theosophists, and the entire falsity of such an idea. I am not going to discuss the question of Mr. Harris’s honesty and motive; he certainly preached altruism and the practical following out of Christ’s teaching: so far, but only so far can it be said that he and Madame Blavatsky are at one: the means to reach this goal differ as widely as the two poles, and it is this difference that I want to make clear, though indeed I hope it is self-evident to all who take the trouble to enquire for themselves. Madame Blavatsky held as the one vital principle that man must develop himself by dint of conscious effort, by listening to the voice of the “God within”, the divine voice which alone could enable him to discern true from false visions, that unselfish labour for others in the world was the only preparation for entrance to the Path leading to eternal truth. The only authority she claimed was that of the Wisdom of the Ages, of which she was the faithful agent and mouthpiece, and which she was bound to present to the world that it might receive it if it would. Obedience to herself she would have none of; personal attachment to herself she always earnestly deprecated.
Something of what Harris held can be gathered even from the few quotations I shall make from Laurence Oliphant’s words, which represent him – and I am sure faithfully – as holding absolute sway over the minds, wills and affections of his disciples in a manner degrading to all man’s higher instincts; natural ties were ruthlessly broken, and “ probation” carried out far away from its sphere, i.e., everyday life. “Harris senses the slightest coldness towards himself directly, and this stops everything”, says Laurence Oliphant – a single phrase, sufficient in itself to convince all who knew Madame Blavatsky that no comparison is possible.
Laurence Oliphant belonged to the class of Christian Spiritualists, though he repudiated Spiritualism as he repudiated Theosophy. He condemned warmly, so Mrs. Oliphant tells us, “all manifestations, as not only vulgarities and impertinences, so to speak, but attempts to debase and lessen a new revelation of life and truth, and dangerous in every way to those who thus opened communications between their own spirits and the most debased inhabitants of the unseen world”. So far Theosophy entirely agrees with him, but what was this new revelation of life and truth? It would take too long to give here even a résumé of his creed, as set forth in “Sympneumata” and “Scientific Religion”, but the point is – how was it revealed to him ? Through Harris’ breath – Harris claiming to have communication by word of mouth with “our Lord Jesus Christ” – through being knit into Harris’ organism, thus binding all disciples together mysteriously and internally, and “the physical phenomena resulting . . . . multiplying the breath 63 of Christ descending directly into the organisms of men, to meet the invading force from below, makes known its presence also by physical sensations of a blessed life-giving character, conveying with irresistible force the consciousness that Christ is actually descending with power and great glory a second time”.
What is this but mediumship and Spiritualism? As practised in after years by himself and his wife, it was the cause of sad mental and physical degeneracy, and more than probably was the cause of the death of both.
That this regeneration by means of Harris’ breath, and that Harris and his system would perplex and probably distress his wife, even though she was “one of them”, is proved by many expressions in his letters to her before marriage. Alice Oliphant must have been very charming. “Clear-headed, yet an enthusiast”, able, spiritual, and intuitive. But for her own assurance that she could not read “Esoteric Buddhism”, I should have hazarded the conjecture that had Theosophy come in her way she would have enquired into it, for Theosophy would have cleared much that distressed her, and would certainly have reinstated her in her own conviction that no good result could follow the surrender of her conscience into another’s keeping. Her struggle with herself and her true instinct, on this head, is pathetically recorded in her letter to Harris, announcing her allegiance to him: “One only thing has been a terrible pang to me, the giving over of my own judgment in questions of moral judgment to any human authority. It is so absolutely new and incomprehensible an idea to me that any outer test can supplant, without risk to itself and to me, the inner test of my actions that my conscience affords . . . . that when I decided to shut my eyes and leave the seeing to you – I felt as though I were putting out the one clear light that had been given me for my guidance.” What suffering was entailed upon her by the putting out of this light no one but herself and her husband knew: they were too noble to stone their idol after his fall.
But to return to my criticism of Laurence Oliphant as a Spiritualist. That he was one cannot, I think, be gainsaid, nor that Spiritualism distorted all his theories of life. It does not alter the fact that his ideal was a lofty one, nor that he lived up to that ideal as few men have done, counting no sacrifice too great for the cause he had embraced. To “live the life”, to carry out Christ’s precepts, to “work for its own sake, . . not for the salvation of self but the regeneration of Humanity” to “make a solidarity of holiness,” by means of which the spirit of Christ should be communicated to the world, was his aim, and what flaw does Theosophy find here? This is the true spirit of Theosophy. Laurence Oliphant did much good in his generation. “No efforts – not the smallest . . . . can vanish from the world of causes . . . The enemies he slew in the last battle will not return to life in the next birth that will be his” (Voice of the Silence).
C.M., F.T.S.
Worship, but name no name! blind are those eyes |
| Sir Edwin Arnold in The Light of the World, |
Karma and Reincarnation
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[Since we say that this universe…]
Since we say that this universe was fashioned conformably to that paradigm of it (the intelligible world), it is necessary that every animal should by a much greater priority exist in that world. And if the being of that world is all-perfect, it is necessary that it should be all things; and that the heaven which is there should be an animal, and should not be destitute of the stars which exist in this sensible heaven. It is likewise requisite that the very subsistence of the intelligible heaven should consist in this. It is also manifest that the earth which is there will not be destitute of life, but will be much more vital (than this sensible earth), and will comprehend in itself all such pedestrious and terrestrial animals as the sensible earth is said to contain. Plants, likewise, established in life, will evidently be there, and also the sea and all water in life, and an ever-abiding stream. All aquatic animals likewise are there. The nature of the air, too, is a portion of the intelligible universe; and the aerial animals which it contains are analogous to the intelligible air. For how is it possible that things which subsist in a vital nature should not be vital? Since we find this to be the case with terrestrial natures. Hence, how is it possible that every animal should not necessarily be there ? For as each of the great parts (of the intelligible universe) is from necessity, such, also, is the nature of the animals in these parts, in whatever manner it may subsist. The heaven, also, which is there, subsists intelligibly. All the animals, likewise, which are in the sensible heaven are there. Nor is it possible they should not be there; for if it were posssible, they would have no (sensible) subsistence. He, therefore, who enquires whence these animals derive their subsistence, enquires also whence the heaven which is there originates. But this is the same thing as to enquire whence animal is derived. And this, again, is to inquire whence all life and all. intellect originate. For in the intelligible world there is not any indigence nor any defect: but all things possess a plenitude, and as it were an exuberance of life.
The Esoteric Christ
The True Church of Christ, Exoteric and Esoteric
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Reviews.
Outlines of a Catechism of Self-Knowledge.
A clue to the Higher Thinking, consisting of Questions and Answers about matters which are of the highest importance to everyone and which may be made clear to everyone, provided that he have a desire for true knowledge. Derived from the only authentic sources and composed with the help of a Brahmin. Done into German by “Sarva Kama Nara” (Seeker of Wisdom).
Such is the announcement on the title-page of a little pamphlet, which, notwithstanding this somewhat pretentious declaration, makes a fair attempt to reduce to simplicity the great problems of self-knowledge, self-consciousness,. divine will, unity, and other philosophical conceptions. Beneath almost every answer is an explanatory note of an argumentative nature; whether this is intended for the teacher of the Catechism, or for the pupil after he has learned the simple answer by heart, we are not told; but it rather tends to destroy the simplicity of the plan as first projected, if not to darken the knowledge it is intended to elucidate. Here is a specimen:
Q. What am I?
A. I am I,
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It would be difficult to find a more appropriate answer to this question, for I am not “my body”, nor my “understanding”, nor “my spirit”. All these are things which belong to me, but are not “myself”. In order to know what man is in his real being, one must first learn to know this real being in itself.
Q. What is this “I” ?
A. A power for which I can find no intellectual conception, for it is far beyond the possibility of human thought.
One feels that one is, and one therefore needs no further proof. I am, not because I think, but I can think, because I am. The consciousness of one’s own existence is independent of, and exalted above the functions of thought. It is a power which is in ourselves, and we ourselves are in this power, hence we know that we are.
Q. What is the name of this power ?
A. Self-consciousness.
It is then explained that by Self-consciousness is intended that which is ordinarily understood by this word, and so on after every definition, which seems rather to prove that deep metaphysical subjects do not lend themselves to the categorical question-and-answer form. Neither can they be reduced, to our thinking, to the level of the lowest intelligence, but the intelligence must be raised until it is able to cope directly with such problems as those of Life and Being. For many years advanced educators of the young have struggled to get rid of such aids to learning as Mangnall’s Questions, Child's Guide to Knowledge, and Brewer's Catechism of Science, but errorem expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, the tendency of the human mind is to run into Catechisms. Undoubtedly such writings have a use, but their usefulness is rather for those who make than for those who read them.
But let us follow the writer a little further.
Q. What is the seat of the divine Consciousness in man ?
A. The will of Unity within him.
If the whole body of man were the seat of self-consciousness, his body would also be self-conscious in its various parts. If it had its seat in all parts of the mind, the whole mind would be self-conscious and capable of cognising all ideas and remembrances at one and the same time. We know, however, by experience that this is not the case under our present conditions, but as the light of the sun illuminates only one portion after another of the earth’s surface during its revolution, so can we only awaken in the mind by means of the light from within some one idea or recollection at a time, and in like manner we govern our bodies. We know that this power is a “Will”, because it depends upon our volition, whether we admit this or that activity to function in the body or the mind.
The use of the German word “Geist” throughout this passage rather complicates the meaning, we have therefore translated it by mind instead of spirit, as it seems intended to represent the intellectual faculties.
The threefold nature of the will is next propounded, under the heads of Will, Volition, and Action; in Self-consciousness consists the freedom of the will, for it is then no longer the slave of irresponsible passions, self-consciousness being the manifestation of Unity in the Whole. By Unity the writer seems to mean the same as the “One Life” in the Secret Doctrine, for he defines “God” as the “Unity of the Whole, and therefore All in All”, adding that it is only when the divine will is manifested through divine wisdom in man, that God can be known in man, and man can know himself. The crown of all wisdom is love, and this can only be attained by loving God in all things and all men.
All who can read German will do well to peruse this little book, in which they may find some light thrown on the difficult subjects treated of; but we can hardly say, as is claimed by the writer in the preface, that the explanations are always either “Short” or “Simple”. We are, however, willing to admit that, as he suggests, the fault may be in ourselves and not in his explanations.
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Cæsar’s Column.[2]
The author of Atlantis, Ragnarok and The Great Cryptogram, appears in a new light in Cæsar’s Column. He makes his début as a novelist, and discloses it in the castle-in-the-clouds sort of love story that gives the orthodox flavouring to the novel, and in the brusqueness and unnaturalness of many of the incidents and situations. But he essays a fierce and stormy theme that might well rip to shreds the sails of the ordinary pleasure boat novel. It is no less than a description of the events that will transpire in 1938, if the present “civilization” continues, and is a complete antithesis to Bellamy’s Looking Backward. Like all who essay a prophecy of the state of affairs in the future and the “march of science”, Mr. Donnelly brings no fresh factor into the field, and apparently has not the ghost of an idea that any discovery will occur of a nature to overturn and revolutionize the whole thought and action of humanity. We have simply a description of the evolution of the present scientific, sceptical, selfish, irreverent and calculating age, with its accompanying increase in the wealth and luxury of the rich, and the poverty and misery of the poor. Money is the king and god. The plutocracy are the tyrants of the world, and bribery is their chief minister; everything is under their heel, until at last the pent-up hate of the starving and down-trodden multitudes bursts forth in every country of the world, and the wild beast once let loose, total destruction follows. The canaille first of all sweep the rich off the face of the earth, and then turn on their own leaders and finally on themselves, so that chaos and black night alone are left to watch the mouldering corpse of “modern civilization”.
It is a horrible tale that is told: not told very artistically nor very realistically, but horrible enough as it is. The merit of the book however, is not so much in the tale, which is thrilling enough for those who have never thought of the hell that the fiendish passions of the human animal can only too easily create if once let loose, as in putting before the public in an easily understood form the present disturbing elements in society and pointing out the putrid sores that cover the body of our civilization and which are only hidden by the gaudy garments of an illusive progress.
In his preface the author says, and says well: –
“I seek to preach into the ears of the able and rich and powerful the great truth that neglect of the sufferings of their fellows, indifference to the great bond of brotherhood which lies at the back of Christianity, and blind, brutal, and degrading worship of mere wealth, must – given time and pressure enough – eventuate in the overthrow of society and the destruction of civilization. . . . The world, to day, clamours for deeds, not creeds; for bread, not dogma; for charity, not ceremony; for love, not intellect.”
One of the best chapters in the book is a description of a working men’s meeting with the speeches delivered. There the whole matter is put in a nutshell and the causes which will lead to the inevitable collapse of society as at present constituted are shown simmering away in a chaldron of despair and hate.
We are glad to welcome Mr. Donnelly among the prophets of woe, for there is grave need of such warning notes, and the present trumpet blast may do something to wake the thoughtless middle classes from their respectable sleep, and the selfish plutocracy from their luxuriant slumbers.
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Theosophical Activities.
Indian Section.
The Tinnevelly T.S. report that they are willing to undertake the translation into English of any Tamil works the General Secretary may think fit to name.
The Berhampore T.S. are engaged upon the translation of short philosophical pieces from the Shastras.
The Ambasamudram T.S. report that Messrs. Neelakantamier and Balakrishnier are compiling a list of Tamil works on Yoga and Mantras. Mr. Madanasami Row is engaged upon the transcription of the Dhanurvidya and Gamana Galika Shastra. The Secretary, Mr. R. Subbiah, also reports that “libraries are said to exist in many villages, and Mr. Parthasarathy Naidoo has been requested to find out, in conjunction with Messrs. Samoo Iyer and Subba Iyer, of Kallidaikurichi, what rare manuscripts could be had for copying purposes from any of the above libraries”.
We sincerely hope that such good promises will be carried out and such excellent resolutions put into practice. If all our Eastern Branches would get their learned members to translate, and then discuss the translation in the Branch, and after revision send it on to Headquarters, the Indian Section would speedily prove itself one of the most valuable factors in our great Theosophical movement, and would attract the attention and co-operation of the best of the Western Orientalists. What with the “H. P. B. Memorial Fund” and the Western “Oriental Department”, there is a wider field of activity than ever opening up in this direction.
The supplement of the Theosophist contains five pages of messages from the Branches of the Indian Sections or resolutions on the Departure of H. P. B.
Ceylon Section.
During this month, two new Buddhist schools were opened, one at Wekada near Panadura, and the other at Ambalangoda further south on the sea coast. Both these schools were opened under the happiest auspices, and the functions were attended by a contingent of workers from the Colombo Headquarters. The “Blavatsky School” for girls at Willawatta, a thriving village on the seaside close to Colombo, has been noted by Government for a Grant-in-aid.
Before this is in our readers’ hands, we hope that Mrs. Higgins, of Boston, U.S.A., will have started for Ceylon, to take the Principalship of the Sangamitta Girls’ School.
Mrs. Higgins, who was unanimously elected as Principal of the Sangamitta Girls’ School, has been placed in a somewhat invidious position in America by the notices speaking of Miss Pickett as Principal. The following letter written to her by Col. Olcott explains the matter: –
“I have received your letter enquiring about the Ceylon appointment, and see that Mr. de Abrew failed to define accurately my instructions. The facts are very simple. For years past, as you know, we have been trying to find a lady of the right sort for the W. E. Society of Ceylon, and I have always been looking out for one while on my travels. I found such a one in Miss Pickett at Melbourne, and her mother consenting freely, brought her to Colombo and installed her as
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Lady Principal en attendant your arrival – about which I had no knowledge whatever until my return from Australia to Colombo. I at once arranged matters thus: – You were to be General Directress of the work of the W. E. Society, superintending all their schools, and advising them about all their work. You would also be the special Principal of one of the High Schools – Colombo and Kandy – and Miss Pickett of the other. You being the elder would naturally be her superior officer.
“The above arrangement stands unaltered, and the money for your passage will be sent for you as soon as it can be raised. . . . . So give yourself no uneasiness, dear Madam, about your appointment.”
European Section.
England.
The President-Founder on his return from his visit to the schools of hypnotism at the Salpêtrière and Nancy, spent a week at Headquarters and then left to pay a short visit to Sweden to form the acquaintance of our energetic brethren of the Scandinavian Peninsular, previous to his departure on September 16th, for New York, San Francisco and Yokohama.
During the past month the General Secretary's office has been exceedingly busy in answering enquirers and issuing diplomas. Though no fresh charters have been issued, there are quite a number of centres with sufficient members to send in a request to become chartered branches.
A startling impulse has been given to the Theosophical movement by the way in which the press has taken up Annie Besant’s statement that she was in direct communication with the Masters. The Daily Chronicle has devoted several columns daily to the discussion that has arisen, and the European Headquarters have been flooded with enquiries. The point of Annie Besant's statement was that she had received letters from the same person in the same writing as those rec ived by H. P. Blavatsky, and that as she had received these letters since H.P.B.’s departure it was clear that the latter had not committed the forgeries charged against her.
The anniversary of the opening of the Women’s Club at Bow, founded by the T.S., was celebrated by a tea and entertainment given to the members by a few Theosophists. The girls enjoyed themselves immensely.
The Countess Wachtmeister has given another proof of her unflagging energy by inaugurating a public reading-room for Theosophical literature. The premises are the old British Section rooms at Duke Street, which are still unoccupied. The idea is to make this the headquarters of the T.P.S. Lending Library, and to throw it open for the use of the public at a small charge. It is intended to open the Library on October 1st., and we hope to be able to give fuller details in our next issue. We are also informed that a new Branch of the T.S. is being formed, and that it will hold its meetings at the same address.
Donations to the General Fund of the European Section.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Passingham, Mrs. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Nicholson, R. W. | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| “E.” | 2 | 10 | 0 |
| Bowring, Miss E. A. | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| S G. P. C. | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Jussawala, D. D. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Bureau, Mme. Gozé (frs. 30) | |||
| Knopf, Dr. S. (frs. 50) | |||
| Dowling, J. P. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| D’Evelyn, F. W. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Cobbold, A. W. | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| 8 | 7 | 0 | |
| And frs. 80 | |||
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H. P. B. Memorial Fund.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amounts already subscribed or promised (frs. 20) | 67 | 11 | 0 |
| Alrutz, Herr S. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Wachtmeister, Countess | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Godfrey, Mrs. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Geary, E. J. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Woolf, W. H. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Walsh, Miss | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Knopf, Dr. S. (frs. 24) | |||
| Wright, T. Herbert | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Green, Thos. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Williams, T. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Williams, Mrs. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Williams, Thos. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Bowring, Miss E. A. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Ker, J. R. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| I. O. ard M. A. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Figanière, Visconde de | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Barber, Mrs. M. | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| Green, Henry S. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Pascal, Dr. (frs. 15) | |||
| Alexander, O. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Menelao, Prof. Pasquale | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Rombotti, A. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Zervos, G. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Chikas, G. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| H. A. V. | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| W. L. L. (per H. A. V.) | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Terrell, Mrs. I. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Raphael, Harriet | 0 | 10 | 6 |
| Hunt, Mrs. | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| Clarkson, F. C. | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Queah, James (per Theosophist office) | 1 | 16 | 0 |
| Wratten, W. G. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Cobbold, A. W. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Cobbold, Mrs. Mills | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Immerzeel, Mlle. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Meuleman, Mme. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Obreen, Mme. | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| Windust, Mrs. | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Man, Mme. de | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Neufville, Mme. de | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 126 | 16 | 6 | |
| And frs 59 | |||
Sangamitta Girls’ School Fund.
| 1891. | Receipts. | £ | s. | d. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May. | Mrs. Malcolm | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Mr. Bickerton | 2 | 10 | 0 | |
| E. K. | 0 | 10 | 0 | |
| July 18. | Viscount Pollington | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| July 30. | Miss Miller | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| July 30. | Countess Wachtmeister | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Aug. 4. | J. M. Parsonson | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Aug. 11. | H. Dalton | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Aug. 11. | R. Cross | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug. 11. | C. A. E. | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Miss I. | 0 | 10 | 0 | |
| H. A. V. | 2 | 0 | 0 | |
| W. L. L. | 2 | 0 | 0 | |
| E. K. | 4 | 0 | 0 | |
| 31 | 1 | 0 | ||
| 1891. | Expenditure. | £ | s. | d. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 23. | Donation per Mr. de Abrew | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| July. | Materials and Implements for Needlework | 8 | 14 | 0 |
| July. | Writing paper, &c., with heading | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| July. | Magic lantern, clocks, bell, atlases, &c., per B. Keightley | 9 | 10 | 3 |
| July. | Packing and carriage | 1 | 8 | 0 |
| 25 | 14 | 9 | ||
| Cash balance sent to Colombo | 5 | 6 | 3 | |
| 31 | 1 | 0 | ||
E. Kislingbury, Treasurer to S.G.S. Fund in Europe.
Audited and found correct.
H. S. Olcott, for the W.E.S.
The Blavatsky Lodge still reports very crowded meetings, and its proceedings have been noticed at length in not a few of the daily papers. The Lecture Hall at Headquarters is found to be too small for the accommodation of all the members and visitors, and there are serious proposals for enlarging the building.
The Brighton Lodge on August 9th was visited by our brother W. Kingsland, their Corresponding Secretary, and by the Countess Wachtmeister. Mr. Kingsland delivered an able address on “Theosophy in relation to Modern Thought”, and the Countess made a very pertinent speech on the necessity of propaganda. Many visitors were present, and an animated discussion followed. Dr. King has presented the Library with “Phantasms of the Living”.
Norwich now possesses a Theosophical centre, organised by Mr. Selby Green, 67, Newmarket Road, since the visit paid to that town by Annie Besant and William Q. Judge. 85
Ireland.
Dublin Lodge. At a special meeting the Balance Sheet for 1890, and the prospective balance sheet for 1891, were submitted, and various business items were discussed. At the regular Lodge meeting that followed, “Root Ideas of Theosophy” were discussed.
Belgium.
Montigny-le-Tilleul has forwarded five applications for membership to European Headquarters and forms a new Theosophical centre in Belgium, which is under the guidance of our respected brother Mons. M. A. Oppermann.
France.
Arrangements are being pushed forward for the formation of a centre for active work in Paris. It is to be independent of all Branch organization, and will consist of a library, reading-room, and secretary’s office, where all information can be obtained. Our French review, Le Lotus Bleu, is to be enlarged, and various pamphlets and leaflets are to be widely circulated. The centre is to be in the charge of our old contributor, Mons. E. Coulomb (Amaravella).
American Section.
The General Secretary of the Section, our friend and colleague, William Q. Judge, left New York on September 8th, to pay his long promised visit to the Branches of the Pacific Coast, and also presumably to preside over the Ad Interim Convention of the Pacific Coast Branches which is to be held this month. The Branches of the Coast are so far removed from the American Headquarters, that it has been found necessary, in addition to the General Convention which has previously met at Chicago or Boston to hold a Convention in California as well: and the present Congress will be the second of these Conventions. We look forward with pleasant anticipation to the results of our tireless brother's tour, and congratulate the members of the Far West on their chance of making the personal acquaintance of their General Secretary and Vice-President.
Theosophical and Mystic Publications.
The Theosophist for August is prefaced by an account of the President-Founder’s doings in Australia under the title, “Our Australian Legacy: a Lesson”. We have already reported the main incidents of this eventful tour in the “Activities” of the last two or three months. G. R. S. Mead contributes a study from the Secret Doctrine, entitled “The Planetary Chain”, in which among other interesting things he introduces a new goddess called “Sucona”, or can it only be a printer’s error for Latona? The paper of K. Naranyanswamy Iyer in the July Theosophist, “When is Retrogression of Man Possible?” has provoked two criticisms. Both critics, however, seem to us to have treated the writer of the paper somewhat harshly. N. D. K. refers very pertinently to H. P. B.’s famous article of the “Transmigration of the Life Atoms” in Vol. IV. of the Theosophist, and contributes some very sensible remarks, with a knowledge of which, however, we had already credited the writer of the original paper, and attributed his obscurity merely to the fact of his treading on very esoteric ground, rather than to an ignorance of elementary theosophic knowledge. R. Nilakuntha Sastri is the second critic, but lays himself open to as much objection as the writer he criticises by such statements as “Gandharvas have a closer connection with female rather than male bodies, because females are better singers than males.” This is ad litteram with a vengeance. 86 The “heavenly choristers” have their correspondences on earth, it is true, the Manushya class included, but the vocalization of females or males in the ordinary sense has little to do with them. The preparers of the heavenly “Soma-juice” for the gods, the imbibers of melody, who drink of the Goddess of Speech (Vâch), as the Vishnu Purâna tells us, have little to do with the comparative merits of male or female singing. Still the astral bodies of men may have something to do with astral devas, especially in the case of adepts, who, as the Rosicrucian philosophers inform us, “marry” the Sylphs and the Undines in order to give them “immortal souls”. What the “philosopher” does with knowledge, the “soulless man” may have to do in another fashion by necessity. “Transmission of Will Power”, by J. E. B., is a somewhat extraordinary account of a series of experiments in mesmerism whereby mental suggestions without the slightest vestige of communication by any other means were immediately acted upon by a sensitive. We recommend the paper to the careful consideration of the Faculty of La Salpêtrière. The next article is interesting to astrologers and will afford them ample details for comparing the Western and Eastern systems: it is called “Nadi Granthas”, and is from the pen of Y. S. R. Next comes “A Short Synopsis of Yoga”, by P.N. It is curious how the generality of writers on Yoga seem to bid a long farewell to common sense. We recommend P. N. to contemplate on his definition of Brahmacharya, and see whether he is capable of raising a blush in self-excuse. The formation of “the Buddha Gaya Mahabodhi Society” for restoring Buddha-Gaya to the Buddhists gives S. E. Gopalacharlu the opportunity of writing on “Vandalism on Buddhist Shrines”. This is followed by twelve pages of translation by the industrious members of the Kumbakonam T.S. The Upanishads selected are the “Mandala Brahmana Upanishad of the Sukla-Yajur-Veda” and the “Dhyana-Bindu Upanishad of the Sama-Veda”. We wonder whether our Hindu brethren have ever heard of a certain person, yclept Bowdler, and would commend that excellent person’s method for adoption on occasion. We hope, however, when the series is completed to see them all printed in one book with a digest and commentary. In closing our summary of the August Theosophist we cannot refrain from congratulating our Hindu brothers at Headquarters on the creditable way they have produced the magazine in the absence of the General Secretary.
The Path for August opens with a most excellent article by Jasper Niemand. It is headed with words of comfort from a source that the real workers of the T. S. have learned to love and reverence. The heading runs: –
“‘Ingratitude is not one of our faults.’ We always help those who help us. Tact, discretion and zeal are more than ever needed. The humblest worker is seen and helped. . .”
Coming as this message does after the departure of H. P. B., this public testimony (private testimony indeed has not been wanting) to the care that is taken of our work will come as a cheering ray of assurance to the Theosophists. In his article, Jasper Niemand, in calling on all to work, points to “a Theosophical education” as the crying need of the times. All members of the Society who wish to help on the work should educate themselves, so that they may be ready to explain clearly to the overworked business man and others the fundamental ideas of Theosophy, especially “in their bearings upon daily life and its inexplicable, haunting sadness and misery”. Above all we require “to live what we know”. “It is better to know a little very thoroughly and promptly say that we know no more (which always placates an enquirer and inspires confidence in our sincerity), than to seek to impress others with the wide range of our thought.” W.Q. J. follows with an article on the same lines with the heading “Are we Deserted?” It is a well argued paper to the effect that if the Masters aided in the evolution of the T.S., as H. P. B. has always claimed, then, being such as they are, it would be absurd to suppose that that help has ceased merely because H. P. B.’s physical body is no more. J. H. Connelly concludes his interesting story, entitled “Calling Araminta Back”, and manages to weave into it some useful remarks on spiritualistic phenomena, and once more sounds that note of warning which it is the duty of every Theosophist to keep ever vibrating. This is followed by a very instructive paper by the Rev. W. E. Copeland, F.T.S., in which he draws a “Historical Parallel” between the state of the early Christian communities after the death of the founder of that religion and the present state of the T.S., after the death of the greatest of our public founders and teachers, and submits that for the 16 years of the T.S. we have more to show than the Christians for their first sixteen years. The following paper by our friend and colleague J. D. Buck, is a tribute to the spirit of loyalty that animates the London Headquarters’ Staff. “Tea Table Talk” is given up for this month to the 87 “League of Theosophical Workers” and presents us with four and a half pages of a description of good and honest slum work. It is brimful of suggestions and will give many valuable hints to our European League. William Brehon concludes the number with a short article on “Methods of Theosophical Work”. The friends of the “Pillakatuka girl” are aghast at our wistful “did she really”. We withdraw all suggestions that the brilliancy of the gem owes anything to the cutter.
The Buddhist has not much of interest in the last numbers that we have received. Its columns are mostly taken up with hand to mouth matter connected with the movement in Ceylon and its struggle with the Padres. Professor Monier Williams is quoted in support of the contention that the term “priests” as applied to the Sangha or Order of Bikshus is misleading and incorrect. The incumbent of the Boden Chair in his latest work writes: “True Buddhism has no ecclesiastical hierachy, no clergy, no priestly ordination; no divine revelation, no ceremonial rites, no worship in the
proper (priestly) sense of these terms.
Each man was a priest to himself in so far as he depended on himself for eternal Sanctification.” But why “was” and not “is” a priest to himself, for evidently Buddhism is not dead but very much alive just now? Buddhists should, however, remember that in proportion as the West becomes acquainted with all that is best in the system of their great teacher, so will their falling off in the practice of these precepts meet with disapproval and condemnation. The Christian who believes literally in the Old Testament and follows the commands of the Lord God which incite him to aggressive intolerance, is more consistent in his “piety” than those who prefer a selfish lethargy to carrying out the commands of their Tathâgata.
The Theosophical Forum, No. 26, devotes a long answer from the pen of its editor to the question: – “In the attempt by beginners to practise meditation, shall we throw our thoughts out to the Supreme Good, or shall we try to realize the God in ourselves?” After a patronising pat on the head to those who are child-like enough to follow the teachings of all the great initiates of all time on this point, viz., that knowledge of the Self within is the only path of right contemplation, the editor proceeds to invent a new method all to himself in the following words:
“But he would be a very complacent person who expected to find within his own being the finest and highest of all possible human merits. Unless endowed with unsurpassed conceit, he would not look within to ascertain the utmost reach of man's intellect or knowledge, or sentiments, or power, or endurance. Still less would he do so for the farthest range of moral purpose or spiritual intuition. How much less for a survey of the Infinite, the Almighty! Certainly the germ of a god-like nature is within him, but it is not in germs that we study a complete evolution; we turn to the perfected whole. If we wish to in any way realise the sublimity of Divinity, our first impulse is naturally to an outlook on the limitless without, not to an inlook on the limited within.”
We have seldom seen so many fallacies huddled together. Leaving aside the question that the answer is diametrically opposed to the teachings of H.P.B. and of her Teachers, we should like to know how we have any cognition at all of the objective universe except by our own inner nature. The objective universe is matter, and matter of the lowest degree: it is the seventh and lowest plane of the manifested universe. Man, on the contrary, and by man we do not mean his lower personality only, but the full seven-principled man, is the cognizer and knower of not only the objective seventh plane of the universe, but also of the six subjective planes. True knowledge, therefore, is knowledge of this cogniser or knower, of the Higher Ego first, and finally of the Atma, the Self. The “without” is limited by five-sense perception, the “within” alone is limitless. If the content of five-sense consciousness is Divinity, then the protests of Theosophy against Materialism and Agnosticism are impertinent. We hope no readers of the Forum will, therefore, adopt this new recipe for “right contemplation”. We have thus one more proof of the famous Horatian adage Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus, for the rest of the answers are excellent.
The Vahan for this month seems to be suffering from an indigestion of “copy”, and can only succeed in answering three questions in six pages. We should recommend the Vâhan in future to shorten the answers and increase the number of questions. A variety entertainment is the most popular in these fin de siècle days.
The Prasnottara, Nos. 5,6 and 7, which we have only just received, continues the attempt of solving some very abstruse and occult problems. The object in view appears to be principally to find out what the Shastras say on the various 88 subjects propounded. This at any rate is useful, though not very convincing to the Western reader. The problems set forward for solution are such as: the length of the Devachanic period, what detertermines sex in rebirth, elementals, caste system, fasting on full and new moon days and on the eleventh day, the metamorphoses of men into animals and stones, asceticism, omens, &c. Many of the answers are beside the mark, but here and there we find a hint that is a volume of explanation in itself. There is a charming childlike simplicity about some of the replies that is quite refreshing to a mind tired and worn-out with the delirium tremens of “mechanical manipulation” and commercial ideals. Still we must remember that the Shastras are, like all other scriptures, poison or nectar, according as they are taken literally or wisely interpreted. Inter alia it may be remarked that although the Shastras may say so, Rishis do not “curse” either gods or men, and that 60,000 years of Devachan is a little too tedious. The Manasaputra are said to have been “cursed” to be reborn, but, as H.P.B. says, this was no curse at all, but rather a fulfilling of Karmic law. And again a very good rule is to remember that in numbers, cyphers are generally “blinds” in esotericism.
Theosophical Siftings, Vol. iv., No. 10, contains the public speeches delivered at the Portman Rooms, in connection with the recent Convention. The speakers were Colonel H. S. Olcott, A. P. Sinnett, Herbert Burrows, Bertram Keightley, William Q. Judge, and Annie Besant. The subjects dealt with are a general view of the Theosophical movement; the connection of modern Theosophy and ancient Initiation; the relation of Theosophy to Science; Karma; Reincarnation; and a concluding speech. The price is 6d., and it will be a very useful pamphlet to place in the hands of enquirers.
Estudios Teosoficos improves with each number, and we heartily congratulate the editor and contributors on their choice of subjects for translation and original articles. This Theosophical review appears fortnightly and is doing excellent work. Our literary members in Spain are evidently exceedingly well read in our literature and are using great tact in their propaganda.
Branch Work: Paper No. 20 of the American Section is entitled “Krishna the Christ”, and is as full of quotations as a sermon. Paper No. 7 of the Indian Section is a reprint of a paper read before the London Lodge T.S. by M. M. C., with the title, “On the Higher Aspect of the Theosophic Studies”. It is a good paper, but hardly calls for reprinting in our present day of theosophical study, when there is so much good original matter procurable.
A Short Theosophical Glossary has been compiled by Annie Besant and Herbert Burrows, to meet a want long felt by beginners, who find difficulty with our Theosophical nomenclature. The two-page introduction is an attempt to give a short digest of Theosophical conceptions, and the twelve-paged little pamphlet can be procured for the modest sum of 1d.
H.P.B.: In Memory of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The memorial articles in the June, July and August numbers of Lucifer have been collected into a large pamphlet of some hundred pages, and can be procured from the Theosophical Publishing Society, at a cost of 1s.
H. P. Blavatsky is the title of a 24 page pamphlet in Spanish by our colleague “Nemo”. It contains an account of the life and work of H.P.B., and contrasts her pure teachings on Occultism with the neo-magism, &c., that obtains in France, and exposes the tactics of the leaders of that movement. The pamphlet is designed for the purpose of protecting Spain from all such cabals and mystification, and pointing out the enormous difference between “Occultism” and the “Occult Arts”.
Annie Besant’s article on “Theosophy and the Law of Population” has been printed in pamphlet form, and has already obtained a large circulation. The price is 1d.
Editorial Notice.
We have much pleasure in announcing that with the October number a series of papers on the “Secret Doctrine”, will be commenced by our well known contributor Mr. Chas. Johnston.
We wish to draw the special attention of all members and friends of the Theosophical Society to the publication of the memorial articles from the June, July and August issues of this magazine as a pamphlet, with portrait of H.P.B. This testimony to the worth of H.P.B. should find its place in the library of every Theosophist.
No. 50 – October 1891
89 The Editor does not hold herself responsible for any opinions, whether religious, philosophical or social, expressed in signed articles.
Theosophy and Christianity.
During the last month all the press of England seems to have turned itself into a missionary of Theosophy; in London the Daily Chronicle – the paper that among the great London dailies is the one most devoted to matters that interest the workers – opened its columns day after day from August 31st until October 1st – to a free discussion on Theosophical questions; the other London papers followed suit at a respectful distance, and the whole provincial press, from the great provincial journals to the smallest country rag, joined in the hurly-burly, until there can scarcely be a man or woman in the country, who takes the smallest interest in public affairs, but must have heard at least that Theosophy exists. Many that sat in darkness have seen the shining of a great light, and from among the curious, excited, jeering, shouting thousands have come out an earnest, joyous few, who amid this deafening hubbub have caught the thrilling whisper which is Sound and Soundlessness in one. To many a far-off hamlet and to many a home whither no Theosophical teaching could penetrate, the loud-mouthed Press has gone, and words either of attack or of defence have struck the note which needs but to be sounded to make response in those that are ready. So are being gathered in those who will carry the work of the Society far on into the Twentieth Century; those whose Karma has brought them to the point at which open the inner senses, which see the Light that to fleshly eyes is Darkness, which hear the Sound that to fleshly ears is Silence.
In the controversy that has raged so wildly a question has arisen 90 that demands calm consideration and careful answer: “What aspect does Theosophy bear to Christianity?” It is a question that each will inevitably answer in his own way, according to his mental position, his prejudices, and his knowledge. The answer given in the ensuing pages is in no sense official; as editor of Lucifer, I am morally responsible for unsigned articles as well as for my own, but the Theosophical Society is in no sense responsible either for Lucifer or its editor. Lucifer and its editor exist to serve the Theosophical Society, as the body in which the Theosophical Idea is incarnated at the present time, but they must take the sole responsibility of the views they present to the world.
Now the Theosophical Society has no creed. It is not Christian nor Buddhist; it is not Theistic nor Atheistic; it is not Materialist nor Spiritualist. It embraces men of all creeds and of none. Does anyone recognise the Brotherhood of all men? Then to him its doors are flung widely open, and the clasp of Brotherhood is offered. None may challenge his right of entry nor bid him stand aside.
But Theosophy is a body of knowledge, clearly and distinctly formulated in part and proclaimed to the world. Members of the Society may or may not be students of this knowledge, but none the less is it the sure foundation on which the Masters have built the Society, and on which its central teaching of the Brotherhood of Man is based. Without Theosophy Universal Brotherhood may be proclaimed as an Ideal, but it cannot be demonstrated as a Fact, and therefore Theosophists are needed to give stability to the Theosophical Society.
Now by Theosophy I mean the “Wisdom Religion”, or the “Secret Doctrine”, and our only knowledge of the Wisdom Religion at the present time comes to us from the Messenger of its Custodians, H. P. Blavatsky. Knowing what she taught, we can recognise fragments of the same teachings in other writings, but her message remains for us the test of Theosophy everywhere. As we learn, we verify some of its more elementary portions, and so – if need be – we may increase our confidence in the Messenger. Also, it is open to every student only to accept as he verifies, and to hold his judgment in suspension as to anything that does not approve itself to his reason, or as to all that he has not yet proven. Only, none of us has any right to put forward his own views as “Theosophy”, in conflict with hers, for all that we know of Theosophy comes from her. When she says “The Secret Doctrine teaches”, none can say her nay; we may disagree with the teaching, but it remains “the Secret Doctrine”, or Theosophy; she always encouraged independent thought and criticism, 91 and never resented difference of opinion, but she never wavered in the distinct proclamation “The Secret Doctrine is” so-and-so.
Now she laid down certain distinct propositions as “fundamental”, and anything that clashes with these is not Theosophy.
1. An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle, on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception, and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought. It is the One Reality, appearing under the two aspects of Spirit and Matter in the manifested Universe.
2. The eternity of the Universe in toto, universes manifesting and disappearing in accordance with the law of periodicity.
3. The identity of the Human Spirit with the Universal Spirit, and the obligatory pilgrimage of the former round the cycle of Incarnation, passing through all elemental forms and acquiring individuality. The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations. (See Secret Doctrine, vol. i., pp. 14, 15, 17.)
I might select many other points authoritatively laid down as part of the Wisdom Religion, but these will suffice for the special purpose I have in hand, namely to define the position of Theosophy towards Christianity.
The next matter to decide is the meaning of the word “Christianity”. If by Christianity nothing more is meant than the teachings of Jesus on brotherhood, forgiveness of injuries, non-retaliation, poverty, self-sacrifice, purity of thought, equal stringency in sexual morality for man and woman – then indeed Theosophy finds nothing to quarrel with in Christianity. But it points out that this lofty and pure morality is not distinctively Christian, but is the morality constantly reproclaimed by all Initiates who come forward as Teachers at any period of the world’s history. It is not the appanage of one religion, it is the glory and the foundation of all. Said the Buddha: “A man who foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me”. “Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love; this is an old rule.” Or Lao-Tsze: “The good I would meet with goodness. The not good I would meet with goodness also. The faithful I would meet with faith. The not faithful I would meet with faith also. Virtue is faithful. Recompense injury with kindness.” Or Manu: “By forgiveness of injuries the learned are purified”. What is there in any Scripture nobler than 92 this declaration of Kwhan-yin: “Never will I seek, nor receive, private individual salvation – never enter into final peace alone; but for ever, and everywhere, will I live and strive for the universal redemption of every creature throughout the world”. Or, to quote the Buddha once again: “Crush out your pride. Speak evil of no one, but be thankful to him who blames thee, for he renders thee service by showing thee thy faults. Kill thine arrogance. Be kind and gentle to all; merciful to every living creature. Forgive those who harm thee, help those who need thy help, resist not thy enemies.” Surely with all these, and myriads more, testimonies before it, Theosophy, the root of all that is true in exoteric religions, may well endeavour to vindicate the essential unity of religions in these matters of deep morality, and Theosophists may well echo the complaint of their great Leader, gently reproaching a Christian Society for limiting “‘the Mysteries of the Divine Truth’ to one single and the youngest of all religions, and Avatars to but one man”. In very truth part of the mission of Theosophy in Western Europe seems to be to vindicate the teachings of Jesus against the Church that bears his name. As our Teacher wrote, in 1890:
“‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone’ – at the guilty. These words appear to have been said in vain, as even Christian law sneers at their practical application. ‘Heathen’ Theosophy alone tries to remember, in our modern day, these noble words addressed to one caught in adultery: ‘And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more’; and alone, again, bows in deep reverence before the divine mercy and Buddha-like wisdom of this judgment. But then we are only infidels and ‘wretched atheists’. Yet this is the key to the seeming ‘contradictions’ in our teachings: we accept and try to follow almost every injunction of Christ – whether the latter be historical or ideal – while feeling the greatest contempt and irritation against that which is now called Christianity, but is simply unadulterated Pharisaism.”
Hitherto religions have excommunicated and ostracised each other: Theosophy comes forth as a peacemaker, saying, “Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong to each other?” All great temples have one and the same foundation, but this unity of moral teaching is overlaid by the differing and often repulsive superstructure of ceremony and creed.
Again if “Christianity” be the esoteric meaning of the allegorical teachings of Jesus, who spake not to the multitude save in parables, Theosophy has no quarrel with it. But alack! Christians are the first to denounce the translation of his exoteric sayings into esoteric 93 truths. The “Father in Heaven” is a well-known esoteric phrase for the Higher Self, but the exoteric Christian insists on turning it into a personal Deity. “Pray to thy Father in Heaven”, in the Initiate’s mouth is a direction to meditate on and aspire to the Higher Self. “The Son of God” is a title assumed by all Initiates, implying the assimilation of the Ego and the Higher Self, as does the sentence, “I and my Father are one”. “I am the Way” again is a common phrase, the Guru being saluted by the Chela with the words, “Thou art the Path”; or again, the disciple is told: “Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become that Path itself”. Christ is the title given to all triumphant Initiates who have passed the symbolical crucifixion and have become the anointed Masters of all nature. The “kingdom of heaven” is the peaceful spiritual realm wherein dwell all who have reached the Inner Brotherhood, and it is “taken by violence”, through the struggles and trials of chelaship, by those who succeed in passing through the final tests, and so in manifesting the Higher Ego, the Christ within them.
Only a very small, indeed a numerically insignificant body of Christians, would for one moment allow the correctness of this Theosophical reading of their familiar phrases; “the Church – the deadliest enemy of the ethics of Christ” – as H.P.B. called it in these pages last year, would incontinently denounce all such rendering and declare it anathema.
Now it is against Christianity as historically taught by the Christian churches that H.P.B. always set her face, and there are certain doctrines enunciated in the official documents of the churches which are in flat contradiction with the fundamental teachings of the Wisdom Religion. These may be held by members of the Theosophical Society, but they cannot be held by the Theosophist.
Let me take as an illustration the allied doctrines of vicarious atonement and salvation by faith. Ecclesiastical Christianity teaches that men’s sins may be gotten rid of, and the penalties due to them remitted, by repentance and faith, the sinner being pardoned for the sake of Jesus, who has borne the punishment due to the guilt of men, and receiving the gifts of the Spirit for his sake. This doctrine is still held by the immense majority of Christian people, and is incorporated in the formularies of all the historical Churches, though repudiated by the Broad Church School. But it is in direct and flagrant contradiction with “the pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy”, which admits no privileges or gifts for man “save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit”. According to one theory, the saint is made by the grace of God; according to the 94 other, he is slowly built up by his own efforts through many incarnations.
Now this divergence of moral teaching is of the most immense importance to the progress of the race. The strenuous and long-continued efforts necessary for the solid building up of a noble character will not be undertaken and persisted in if men are taught to look without themselves instead of within themselves for the necessary strength.
The “forgiveness of sins” is part of the creed of all the churches, but Theosophy proclaims Karma, the inviolable Law, the perfect Justice, by which every evil deed, as well as good, works out its inevitable result. Too stern a law to suit the silken-clad nerveless ethics of the Nineteenth Century; too rigid and too impartial an order to suit those whose ideas of their Deity make him resemble themselves, easily accessible to judicious flattery and to be won by gifts of abject repentance and of fulsome praise. Theosophy is of vigour somewhat too virile for the languid platitudinarians of our time.
The doctrines of everlasting rewards and punishments – “heaven” and “hell” – are totally incompatible with Theosophy, which teaches that man returns to earth-life again and again, until he has exhausted all life’s lessons and has evolved to human perfection, or has dropped out of the progressing race for this Manvantara. The periods between these recurrent incarnations are spent in rest – as night follows day and is spent in physical rest – brightened by dreams, i.e., by the action of consciousness in a subjective state. This “Devachan”, subjective and transient, is the only Theosophical analogy of heaven, and from it the Self comes back to the school of earth. “Hell” is an allegorical word expressive of suffering on earth, the sorrow which “dogs the heels of sin”.
The Pauline teaching of the subjection of women is, again, in antithesis to the complete equality of the sexes, as taught by Theosophy. The human Self is sexless, and incarnates successively in male and female bodies during the long cycle of incarnation, gathering human experience in both alike. In one life a man, in another a woman, once more a man, and so on, life after life. Only thus can the Human Being be built up, the full stature of Humanityevolved.
Theosophists have it in charge not to whittle away the Secret Doctrine for the sake of propitiating the Christian churches that have forgotten Christ, any more than they may whittle it away for the sake of propitiating Materialistic Science. Steadily, calmly, without anger but also without fear, they must stand by the Secret Doctrine as she gave it, who carried unflinchingly through the storms of well-nigh seventeen years the torch of the Eastern Wisdom. The condition of success is perfect loyalty; let the churches climb to the Wisdom Religion, for it cannot descend to them.
The Eighth Wonder
100
Heat, Sound and Consciousness
Before entering on the subject of this article, I wish to explain the object which I have in view in treating physical appearances in the way I have done in “Exoteric Sound” (Lucifer, Jan. 15th), and in the way I propose to do now.
Science has sought to eliminate the human element as much as possible from scientific considerations, in order to find a purely mechanical basis devoid of any admixture of human feeling, on which to reconstruct the fabric of the Universe. Its splendid achievements in the present century have fostered this hope. But when we leave the practical and enter on the domain of theory, when in fact we endeavour to find causes for the effects which have been so cleverly classified by the methods at present in use, the results are bewildering in the extreme. Theosophy, on the other hand, says that we ought to retrace the path which has been leading us from the centre to the periphery of natural life, and seek in the inner nature of man himself for an explanation of those causes whose physical effects the intellect of the age has learnt so well how to manipulate, and it is in the endeavour to carry out this idea that these articles have been written. The method followed is to bring the knowledge acquired by modern scientific investigation to the bar of human consciousness, and by the infusion of human feeling into the mechanical structures of Nature, to endeavour to connect them with the invisible causes which have given them their birth. The word consciousness used here by me applies to that mental power of perception which lies at the back of the senses. Metaphysically it is the abstract result of the Will to Be. Physically it is abstract Feeling. I have used the words material plane and physical plane as denoting the same plane of existence, namely, that of our visible world, and psychic plane to denote that of the mental world.
As a sensation, heat is a feeling only, and is therefore a perception of the human consciousness. For this reason there must be an intimate connection between the two, necessitating the presence of the one when the other is active. But the phenomena of heat are the same both for Man and Nature, and therefore we may infer that in both cases it manifests the presence of a Conscious Power. Modern Science helps us to prove this inference in a very satisfactory manner, for we are told that no effort 101 of mental consciousness takes place without the evolution of a corresponding amount of heat in the brain, so that the necessary interdependence of heat and consciousness in Man is undoubted.
In Nature Science tells us that no change takes place except in obedience to laws, and that no law is active without the evolution of an equivalent amount of heat. Now a law is imperative and its formulation in matter is at once the necessity for change and the guiding power of its direction. So that the heat which represents, according to Boule’s law, the work done in matter, is really representative of the conception on the material plane of the formula of the law. Surely there is no difference between the cause of heat in the matter of the brain when a thought is conceived, and that which we find in Nature when a law becomes objective. Both must be due to the activity of consciousness, and heat must be its physical counterpart.
We know that when heat is felt, consciousness is roused to action. Now, this activity is evidently psychic, because it represents that conscious effort to perceive, which ends in physical feeling, so that (working on the psychic plane to produce the sensation of heat) it must be the counterpart of the material energy working on the plane of matter to produce heat. To make the position of the two opposite forces clearer, let us trace the successive steps by which we become aware of heat. Let a hot wave of the transmitting medium touch us. It rouses our consciousness, which turns upon itself and thus doubles back on to the wave as a sensation of heat (compare the afferent and efferent nerves). There can be no doubt that this is the progress of the sequence of cause and effect. The wave represents the cause; its effect is a psychic activity which brings consciousness from a latent to a positive condition; making it the author of that perception which we call heat. Heat, therefore, is as I have already said, the physical counterpart of consciousness, and it is also the object of the efferent perception, just as on the psychic plane consciousness is the object of the afferent impulse roused in it by the so-called wave of heat. This wave is made in the transmitting medium by the vibration of a generating cause, as for instance, the activity of the particles in a glowing piece of coal with the corresponding agitation which they produce in the surrounding air. The vibration in the coal generates its own temperature; in other words, work has been developed on the material plane by the macrocosmic consciousness; now this change of temperature we can only perceive in the direct ratio of its power to rouse our own perception of it; and it is in answer to this that human consciousness generates that feeling in the body which we call the sensation of heat. In fact, I conclude that our perception is the measure of the interaction of the consciousness of the World on that of Man. With some alterations to suit the changed relations between cause and effect, this reasoning applies equally to the production of animal 102 heat in a physical body, but I will not complicate unnecessarily the general simplicity of this theory by enlarging upon it.
Now that I have explained the progress by which heat becomes a known reality in the objective world, let me call particular attention to a most interesting point, namely, that heat, as the objective counterpart of an impulse which has its use in latent perceptive power and its completion in positive perception, therefore becomes the replica of an activity which can only be characterised as having its whole energy consumed in a perception of itself. This, as has been shown by various philosophers, is the distinctive feature of the Will to Be of inorganic matter, and the Will to Live of organisms. I take it for granted that what I mean will be understood when I say that the Will of Schopenhauer (with obvious restrictions, as it applies only to the psychic and not to the Spiritual Will), or the Swâra or great Breath of Esotericists (the Current of the Life Wave), is represented in a physical form by the energy of heat, an assertion based on our finding that heat is the action of consciousness reflecting upon itself. It may seem odd to talk of a mental reflection as if it were a physical one. But have we not seen that the mind rouses the physical sensation of heat, and that this has the effect of a natural force, the replica of its supernatural activity on the psychic plane. As a copy its cause of existence should be a reflection, just as this is the nature of its psychic motion. And because as heat it is in the objective realm of natural law, this reflection becomes a physical one. It is the same with heat generated in organic or inorganic bodies, which is in every way a physical force reflected from motion on the psychic plane. The great difference between this view of the nature of heat and that generally accepted is this. I take heat to be nothing in itself apart rom the amount of consciousness roused either in Man or Nature, while I believe that it is generally regarded as having its own separate existence, and as being hot in itself quite apart from Perceptive Action. We have now arrived at two definite conclusions with reference to heat and its real significance in the natural phenomena of the world. (1) Heat is never present except as the exponent of conscious activity. (2) We recognise it to be the manifestation of that physical energy which is the cause of life and change. In this sense it is the Current of the Life Wave, the Will to Be. Having thus generalised the meaning of heat, we must study its inner nature and endeavour to answer the several questions which await solution, in order that we may have an all-round grasp of our subject. But before proceeding with this investigation, I will notice generally some of the questions to which heat, viewed along the line of thought I have pursued, is, I believe, the key.
We know that the world was at one time incandescent, and that the matrix of the solid earth was but a glowing centre of Heat in Space. This Heat is the reflection of conscious activity, and the work done, which has 103 evolved it, is the objective projection of consciousness upon itself. In other words, a simple Self Perception has burnt itself into Space, that homogeneous something out of which the Universe is made. This simple appearance of the heat of an awakening consciousness is paralleled in our own experience by the evolution of heat in the brain under the action of conscious activity; and the reality of this resemblance becomes more apparent when we are told that every atom of what science calls planetary stuff is raging according to the impulse of imperative law, and that therefore the work done in producing this fiery centre is due, as in cerebral heat, to psychic causes. In fact I do not see how it is possible to avoid giving a conscious initiative to law which, because of its imperative character, is subjective to its materialisation.
If laws govern the production of planets, this burning spot in Space which afterwards becomes our solid world, must be the result of activity in a Perceptive Medium, which would bear the same relation to earth matter which consciousness does to the brain.
The law of co-relation of forces requires that the units which measure the sum total of heat evolved in this first effort at planetary production should be all collected in one whole, and the relation of each to their sum total must be a psychic conception or law, whose formula represents a conscious unity. This synthesis is measured in Space by the full quantity of heat evolved, and on the psychic plane by an Idea, or unit of Conscious Power, whose unfolding we watch to this day in the progress of natural evolution. By what has been said of the relation of heat to Will, the activity of this Idea is a definite force of Will, and the objective work it does is visible in the heat produced on the plane. But Will is an Energy whose unique direction is always towards self-perception, so that its reflection on the material plane is that of work directed into its own centre. But this is the distinctive characteristic of the effect of gravity, which is therefore common to every atom composing our globe, because it is the result of the impress of the nature of Will (an impulse to self-recognition) in all its agglomeration of partial activities. And the rotary motion round a centre which animates heavenly bodies is the mechanical expression of the main impulse of the Will animating the synthetic Idea enfolding those minor impulses whose action is represented by gravity.
This, then, is a rough sketch of the causes and effect which produce the laya centre of our world.
The next act in the drama of evolution is evidently Materialisation which, because the first Act is the working of Self on itself, is based on the opposition of forces. This, I venture to think, is the true characteristic of the molecule, and I shall give more precise details of it further on. At present let us confine ourselves to this acknowledged fact: that out of nebulous formlessness the solid earth gradually emerges. The solidification, etc., is simply the form of the work done by the Will whose energy of 104 action is shown by the heat of the laya centre. The minor impulses which make up the main impulses of the Will gradually die out in Realisation, and the full consciousness of the action or its Form takes the place of its activity or heat. Allegorically, we may say that a continuous life current flows round the world like a ceaseless tide, its impulses constantly returning on themselves, like the forward rush and back wash of the waves of the sea, leaving behind them formal counterparts of their psychic meaning. The heat at present in the earth (Solar heat is of course discounted) represents the residue of the activity of the main impulse; the formation and forms of the earth give us the amount of heat which has died into Realisation as objective ideas, while that heat which is radiated represents the ratio of each minor impulse to the major impulse, and is the activity of the co-relating Law, or the animator of the psychic counterpart of material Forms in the invisible world. So that we may say that primarily the loss of heat in the world is due to its re-absorption in the form of its work, and that therefore the cooling of the earth is proportional to the amount of work accomplished by the Will towards its solidification.
Every form represents a given amount of the initial activity of the Will which we have seen reflecting as heat in the matrix of the world, and for this reason everything material may be destroyed by heat, this destruction implying that a reconversion into that quantity of the world’s will equal to the objective measure of the activity of consciousness which produced it. Things burnt re-enter the fluid current of the Will which animates the world, and that they re-appear in another shape, is due to fresh realisation amongst the minor impulses.
Let us take another point in the earth’s career as a cooling planet, namely, the appearance of organic life upon its surface. Can we find a reason for this appearance in questioning heat? In the first stages of the world, when as a fiery globe it whirled across the firmament, its native heat must have been superior to that received from the Sun. In the course of ages a time must have come when the effect of solar heat began to overpower the earth’s natural warmth. That is to say, the reflection of earthly consciousness began to feel the animating influence of the Solar Consciousness, and the Will of the latter to act on the Will of the former. Now this is the essence of reproduction as we see it exemplified in vegetable and animal life, and we may assume that at this stage organic life was born on to the earth. I will put this into the form of a general definition: Organic life is the result of the main impulse of the Solar Will acting on that of the Earth’s Will. The result of this psycho-material action is the vitalisation of the Monad.
This Monad cycling onward, eventually calls our attention to two facts. First the evolution of cold-blooded animals, then that of hot-blooded ones. Does our knowledge of heat explain why this should be? I think it does, as follows. We find underlying the progress of animal development, 105 a continuous growth in the nervous system. Now the nerves, I take to be the channels of communication between the consciousness of the Monad and that of the Sun and Earth. Along these lines run the perceptions roused by the solar and worldly Wills, and they resemble therefore the lines of least resistance, to the Monadic Will, spoken of by C. C. M., in his article on the “Idea of Rebirth” (Lucifer, February 15th). Monadic evolution is typified in the progress of animal development; and the successive additions to the nervous system, which make the real character of advancement in the scale of animal life, are successive paths beaten out by the Monadic Will under the constant incitement of the other two inferior Wills, an incitement which is not confined to the material plane, but takes place also on the psychic plane. Now it is evident that the greater the facilities for the interaction of the Wills, the more heat will be generated in the body as the result of the activity of the Monad's Consciousness. This agrees with known facts, namely, that with a rudimentary ganglionic system, we have a want of life and heat in the enveloping matter or body. While the higher we go in the complexity of nerve development, the greater the heat produced in the body and the more intense the animal life.
I have now said enough to indicate the vast field for research which opens out to us in this study of Heat as Will Power, and I must now return to the subject matter of our inquiry. By comparing Heat with Sound, I hope to give to the former a more distinct character and to prove one or two interesting things.
[It is stated in an American paper that Joe Jefferson…]
It is stated in an American paper that Joe Jefferson, the actor, has made an interesting find on the summer place which he has purchased near that of ex-President Cleveland at Buzzard’s Bay, Massachusetts. In laying out the grounds the workmen dug up the skeleton of a man that filled them with astonishment from its great size. A workman lay down by it, however, and it was estimated that it must have belonged to a man at least six feet six inches in height.
A most peculiar thing was brought to light, however, when the skull was taken to Mr. Jefferson and by him examined. It was like ordinary skulls, only larger, except that it had, as far as could be seen, no place where the eyes had been. There was one hole in the centre of the forehead that might have once served for one eye. This led Mr. Jefferson to believe that he had, perhaps, discovered the skeleton of a Cyclops.
Theosophy and Occultism
My Unremembered Self
121
Problems of Life.
February 29th and March 1st, 1880.
It is indeed difficult for the scientific empiricist who has adopted the inductive method of investigation, to avoid the illusion which represents to him as impossible the existence of a conscious, intelligent life outside of organism and without the sense-stimulating organs. Nevertheless, this illusion is founded on a view and judgment of the individual phenomena of life, which, however it may seem apparently indisputable and attractive, is still only superficial and one-sided.
The principle which lives in us, that which senses and realizes the sensations, cannot be itself the organ, that is to say an object; nor can it be, by its very nature, the subject, or a being apart from the organ (not in a grossly material sense, of course); and, as a matter of fact, it cannot have any of the properties that are subject to our perceptions such as belong to organized beings. Closely linked with the organic elements, without which its sensuous manifestations would be impossible for us, with the destruction of that link it ceases to be the object, or rather an object for our sensuous investigation. But who can represent to himself the possibility of sensation, that of clearly comprehending and realizing that which he senses (hence thinks of and reasons about) without being at the same time conscious of himself, being, so to speak, his own subject? By breaking or discontinuing the connexion of this subjective, sensing, self-conscious principle with the organic elements, we only destroy its objectively individual manifestation, hence that of life also, but not the life-principle. As to the question to what degree it can preserve its individuality, in other words its individual (personal) image after the destruction of the binding organic union, this is quite another thing, and in its very nature no less profound a problem; I may treat of it from my own standpoint elsewhere.
A theory in apparent contradiction with the idea that sensation and cerebration must be always conscious, has settled itself of late in modern 122 science. It is true, that judging from many facts it becomes difficult to deny in certain cases unconscious feelings and cerebrations. It is not always easy to seize the substantial difference between these forms of sensation and cerebration and those we call conscious. Here are facts. It is probable that the organism of the fœtus senses unconsciously: most of the reflex actions are based on unconscious sensation conveyed to the motor-nerves. The interior organs no doubt, transfer from themselves various kinds of sensations; but these are unconscious and are generally manifested only by reflex actions. The impressions communicated to us by the senses, by sight especially, from the outside world, produce in us correct representations of objects only, as it were with the help of unconscious cerebration, acquired by experience. Many movements of the body, also, are accomplished unconsciously. But in all these phenomena, classed under one name of unconscious sensation and cerebration, we must understand, firstly, only our organic receptivity, or the faculty of the tissues being stimulated – a faculty which would, perhaps, be better described as sensibility, without which the tissue could not be excited by stimulus, nor transfer it to the centres for the stimulation of the reflex. Secondly, a whole series of organic sensations (starting from the interior organs), though presented to our consciousness less clearly and definitely than external impressions conveyed to it by our senses, acts still on consciousness indirectly, by exciting at one time fancy, at another desires, stimulating our passions and other reminders of themselves: therefore such sensation cannot be called altogether unconscious. Thirdly, and finally, there are many fully conscious perceptions, which are so evanescent as to disappear almost instantaneously from the circle of our conscious activity and are not retained by memory.[4] Sometimes, as during those moments when our attention is engrossed and centred on some one subject, such sensations 123 are not remarked at all, or reach our consciousness only by glimpses; as for instance sundry physical wants during hard mental work.
With regard to unconscious cerebration, in the absence of which we could not explain many of the functions of our senses, e.g., the calculation of distances by the eye, the correct appreciation of objects seen from all sides, perspective, etc., even here it is only apparent; for this seeming unconsciousness is, in many cases, only the result of habit and experience. That which in the early days of our life we have learned to recognise owing to conscious, gradual and practical experience, having become familiar to us in after life, may often seem to be taken in by our senses unconsciously, and we make use of the fruits of that acquired knowledge without thinking that the latter is due only to long practice. It is but natural that a mental appreciation of things which has become for us a matter of everyday habit, should cease in time to be regarded as a mental appreciation at all, but appear on the contrary something quite evident, not necessitating the slightest exercise of thought. To know that two and two make four is not generally regarded by us as necessitating an expenditure of cerebration; it appears to us as evident as a chair or a table before our eyes, the correct appreciation of which objects has demanded of us at one time of our life as much mental study as that 2 + 2 = 4. Moreover, we have to remember that even fully conscious thoughts and perceptions remain such occasionally for a very short period; the glimpses of thought that pass through our consciousness are, at times, so rapid that they can be compared to flashes of lightning without any exaggeration. Nevertheless, notwithstanding their evanescent nature, many among these, unnoticed as they were, remain in our memory, inciting us to actions; in such cases, those thoughts themselves that have served them as motives may appear to us unconscious. It also happens that our attention, being all absorbed in some occupation, does not take note at all of either actions performed or the thoughts that guide the latter, though neither of them are unconscious. In order to solve conclusively the question of the consciousness or the unconsciousness of our perceptions, thoughts and opinions, it is necessary that we should first learn to transform our subjective I into the object of a constant and incessant observation of that subject, by itself.
But such an intense and one-sided activity of our attention to the conscious and the unconscious in us, is evidently abnormal, so that even the results of such observation can hardly be regarded as trustworthy or fit for control. It is stated that Johann Müller became almost insane during such a self-watching. He had determined to note the precise moment, in himself, of the transformation of the waking into the sleeping state; in other words, he had undertaken to catch himself in the passage from consciousness to unconsciousness. But we cannot step out from the magic circle, however great our efforts and desire to determine with better exactitude our subjective individual meaning. In its general 124 features it is identical in all humankind, and has, moreover, many a feature in common with the subjectivism of other animals. But the resemblance is manifested objectively only in three ways: through the voice (sound), speech (articulated words), and motion – direct and reflected. All our experiments and observations of the phenomena of the subjective individual being of men and animals have no other criterion. But if all these, the important knowledge acquired through them, notwithstanding, are untrustworthy, doubtful, two-faced and contradictory, how much more so the sciences which may have been acquired by purely subjective observations !
Frogs and Chinamen
Consciousness
A Puranic Allegory
133
But is that justice in a Loving Law? |
| The Disciples. – M. H. King. |
The Instability of the “Word”
136
Pain can never daunt us more, once we know its meaning, |
The Seven Principles of Man
145
La Morale du Bouddhisme[5].
This short pamphlet of 24 pages, 8vo, contains much food for thought, and is a statement of Buddhist ethical philosophy, written by an enthusiast, who nevertheless reserves to himself an extensive right of selection and criticism.
M. de Rosny considers the interblending of philosophy with ethics in the Buddhist system as its “weak side”, and further laments the existence of an esoteric teaching, or rather that Buddhism should have had recourse to “Esotérisme”. In other words, if we interpret the professor aright, the existence of a scientific and philosophical basis of morals is a thing to be deplored. We have always, on the contrary, been led to believe that this was precisely the “strong side” of Buddhism, for failing this we are thrown back on the “ipse dixit” of the moral teacher. The philosophy of Buddhism gives the intellectual authority for its ethics, and the esoteric doctrine gives directions for the practical scientific demonstration, not only physical but also psychical, of the intellectual and ethical teachings.
On the other hand, M. de Rosny writes with great force, and tells the readers of his pamphlet much that is desirable to know concerning the precepts of the Tathâgata, and clears away many misconceptions. In Buddhism, he writes, “Science and Love are the two essential factors of the Universe”, and continues: –
“Bien que l’Amour et la Science soient les deux coefficients essentiels dans le dogmatisme bouddhique, ils ne le sont à titre égal qu’à la condition de se compléter l’un l’autre, de se confondre en quelque sorte, de devenir une seule et même chose. Jusqu’ à leur complète unification, l’Amour n’est qu’un véhicule à l’aide duquel l’être peut obtenir la Connaissance, mais l’Amour n’est pas la Connaissance elle-même. Si l’être ne possède pas ce véhicule, et jusqu’ à ce qu’il l’ait acquis, il est condamné à suivre la chaîne des transmigrations dont il ne parvient à se délivrer qu’après avoir fait disparaître non seulement toutes les entraves résultant de sa condition corporelle, mais encore le souvenir, les réminiscences de ces entraves.”
Later on the professor says quite correctly that the law of the universe is eternal progress, but that the only true progress is moral progress. This is a grand truth that Theosophists should never weary in propagating; eternal progress is the destiny of man, not eternal rest; and if further that progress must be a moral progress, then the law of spiritual manhood is eternal activity in well-doing.
Needless to say that the President of the first International Congress of Orientalists puts one more nail into the coffin of that now fast disintegrating lie that Nirvâna means annihilation. All Buddhist teaching shows Nirvâna to be something to be attained by continuous effort. Effort means activity; annihilation, inactivity; from which premisses naught but the logic of a lunatic asylum can draw the conclusion that Nirvâna is annihilation.
It is to be hoped that La Morale du Bouddhisme will be widely read in France, and by the French-reading public; cheap hand-books on Eastern religions and philosophies are what the public want, and are the most acceptable presents that the learning of our Orientalists can make to the less instructed public.
146
An Outline of the “Secret Doctrine”.
[In these papers an attempt will be made to give a clear account of the theory of life and development contained in Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, based on stanzas from the Book of Dzyan. As it is impossible within the limits to which we are restricted to bring forward all the arguments in support of these theories, and as no partial statement would be adequate, no attempt at argument will be made. Readers who may be inclined to accuse us of too dogmatic assertion of unproven facts, of “handling worlds and pebbles too freely”, will kindly remember that this is simply the outline of a doctrine the proofs of which they must seek for in the doctrine itself. As these papers may subsequently be reprinted, any criticism or discussion of them will be very welcome.[6]]
Universal Night. The absorption of the Universe into latency; in its scientific, philosophical, and religious aspects; the Trinity in Unity. The Absolute.
The Secret Doctrine begins by contemplating the Universe as withdrawn from its condition of manifestation into the latent state in which it sleeps during the recurring periods of Universal Night, when time is absorbed in eternal duration.
For us, time is registered by the motions of the sun and stars; by the earth's rotation, marking out the day from sunrise to sunrise; by the waxing and waning of the moon; by the earth's yearly journey round the sun; and by that greater year that the pole traces out among the constellations in the slow Precession of the Equinoxes.
But when, at the evening of each universal day, the earth and the moon have faded to pale shadows, and with the sun and planets, one by one have melted back into the common source from which they sprung; when all the stars, the clocks of the universe, have become invisible, then time, as we know it, ceases, and vanishes into the bosom of eternal duration.
Even in the world of manifestation, Time has an uncertain, erratic life. In the waking world, minute drags after minute, with the stiff rigidity of dense matter; solid forms remain unchanged, or imperceptibly unchanged, for hours or ages.
In the world of dreams – as real to itself as the world of day – minutes and hours have more fluidity; image succeeds image, melting, coalescing, transforming, with a rapidity that would be startling in waking life, but seems quite natural in the dream-world, where an hour of day may be an age of dream.
In those clearer worlds to which spiritual vision penetrates, long vistas of being are concentrated into a moment; past and future draw nearer each 147 other, and a “thousand years are as one day”. In the highest world of all, where vision becomes divine, all the lives of all beings are perpetually visible; for the transformations of time have no existence there, and the infinite past and the infinite future have become blended in the Eternal Now.
When the Universe from manifestation in objective life has sunk back gradually through all the planes of being into this highest divine world, then the time that we know is at an end, vanished and absorbed into eternal duration.
When the worlds have thus faded away in each evening of the universe, and the boundless realms of space, from the lowest material plane, through the planes of dream and vision and spiritual sight, to the threshold of the highest divine world, are left without visible inhabitant, either man, angel, or demigod; then, in the decrepitude of time, space too becomes transformed; there is no longer height, nor breadth, nor depth, for there is no longer anything to measure by these attributes; then Space is transformed into Being, independent of the dimensions of space.
Where are all the inhabitants of Space, from the lowest world to the highest, from the human and sub-human to the angel and demigod? Where are the manifold worlds in which they lived and moved and had their being?
To answer this we must ask, what are these worlds, and in what consists the life lived in them by man, and angel, and demigod.
Looked at from one point of view this life, whether of man, angel, or demigod, and these worlds in which they live, consist of an endless series of pictures and images, whether appearing outwardly through the senses, or inwardly in the mind; passing unceasingly before the Consciousness, which takes note of image after image, and picture after picture, observing all as a “disinterested spectator”.
Between these two, Consciousness, the disinterested spectator, and the incessant world of sensations, of images and imaginings that pass before it, a great gulf is fixed; Consciousness remains unchanged on the one side, and the infinite picture-world unfolds itself unceasingly on the other. In this panoramic world of images, space adheres as an attribute, and time adheres as an attribute; space refers to the extent of the image, and the portion of the whole panoramic world it fills; and time refers to the durability of each image or impression, as compared with other images more fleeting or more sustained. Time and Space therefore, as being but a part of the panorama, the unceasing picture-world that passes before Consciousness the disinterested spectator, cannot logically be attributed to the Consciousness which observes them as external to, and different from itself.
This is expressed by saying that Consciousness is eternal, that is, quite independent of and outside time; and also independent of and outside the dimensions of space; or in the words of the Upanishad, Consciousness is the Ancient “smaller than small and greater than great”.
148 Thus, from this point of view, we are led to divide the Universe into two entirely different though related powers, on the one side Consciousness – eternal and free from the bonds of time and space, and on the other the endless panorama of pictures, images and perceptions, appearing either outwardly through the senses, or inwardly through the mind; between these two, Consciousness, and the objects of Consciousness, a great gulf is fixed, which is bridged over by the magician Perception.
Before the disinterested spectator, Consciousness, stretches a veil or film of images and sensations more permanent and more closely adhering to Consciousness, than the vast mass of pictures and images that pass by, in the endless panorama of the worlds; through this veil or film the other images and pictures are seen, and from it they receive a more or less permanent colouring and temper. This veil that adheres to Consciousness is the personality: the bundle of feelings, thoughts and desires that make up the personal life.
And though Consciousness is a disinterested spectator, this adherent film of personality is, on the contrary, intensely interested in the panorama of pictures that pass before it, and receives from them, or attributes to them, alternate sensations of pleasure and pain, heat and cold, bitter and sweet, longing and satiety, love and hate – the “pairs of opposites” which make up the sum of the feelings and sensations that fill the life of the personality.
This condition of things, the Consciousness as disinterested spectator of the ceaseless panorama of pictures, with the personality as a veil between, is repeated on all the planes. But as life rises from the lower and more material to the higher and spiritual planes, changes appear. The veil of personality becomes gradually more luminous and lucent, till at last it stretches as a hardly visible, transparent film between consciousness and image, and – no longer subject to the “pair of opposites”, pleasure and pain, love and hate, longing and satiety, but rather receptive of the single essences of which love and hate, pleasure and pain, heat and cold, are but the positive and negative poles – the purified and cleansed personality begins to partake of spiritual and divine nature.
Along with this ennobling of the personality, a change passes over the panorama of life on the higher planes or ranges of being. What had seemed on the lowest ranges to be a mere chaotic hurtling of images, an erratic lawless passage of sensations, with no order or relation to the Consciousness to which they were presented, is seen on the higher ranges of life, to be an orderly procession, a steady progress full of disciplinary, educational value.
And on the divine plane, it becomes apparent that the power that marshals and compels these images, these elements of discipline and development, is not foreign or isolated from Consciousness, but is rather the eternal Will wedded to Consciousness, the expression of that Self of which Will and Consciousness are the eternal twin powers. These will-directed elements of discipline which on the lower planes are apparently chaotic and 149 at random, on the higher planes draw closer and closer to the Consciousness, and on the highest divine plane they are seen as not foreign to Consciousness, but partaking of its nature, and subject and object become united in one divinity which is neither of them, and is yet both of them.
When throughout all the worlds the “pairs of opposites”, pleasure and pain, love and hate, longing and satiety, have, after the interval of ages of manifested life, become gradually drawn together, and have coalesced into those single essences of which they are but the negative and positive poles; when throughout all the worlds the images and pictures, the elements of discipline – in which the spiritual Will, the twin-brother of pure Consciousness, expresses itself – have gradually drawn closer and closer to Consciousness, the film between them growing ever purer and more pellucid; and when at last throughout all the worlds the twin-brothers Consciousness and Spiritual Will (in which all manifestation has been absorbed) become once more one, then begins that true life which is veiled under the name of Universal Night.
This re-union of the “pairs of opposites”, their slow re-absorption into spiritual Will, the divine parent of all manifestation, and the re-union of Will and Consciousness, with the disappearance of all life as we know it – in reality the beginning of true life – this is the second element (or the second, metaphysical aspect) of the mystery that is called the Nights of the Universe.
There is yet a third side to this subject. Linked with Consciousness on every plane and range of being is a sense of moral life, an aspiration to, and dim perception of, higher and diviner life above, and a sense of relation with and obligation to, the cognate lives around us.
On the lower range of being these two moral perceptions are dim and clouded.
As life rises higher and higher, entering deeper and deeper into the divine power that was first only dimly felt above, side by side with this upward growth is an outward growth by which the boundaries, which had at first seemed hard and impassible, between us and the cognate souls around us, begin to soften and melt away; and at last on the great day, when we become one with the divine soul above us, we have also by the same growth become one with the cognate souls beside us; and, though still knowing our own existence in the divine, we are no longer conscious of any distance between our own souls and the souls of our fellow-men – then no longer men, but divine beings, at one with us, and at one with the divine.
This great at-one-ment, or atonement, that brings about the union of all humanities into one divine life, forms the last and highest aspect of the mystery of the consummation of life which ushers in that true being, that real life, which only human blindness calls Universal Night. This gradual growth to perfect fulfilment of our obligation and relation to the human around us, in morals, and to the divine above us, in religion, forms the 150 third aspect of the mystery of the ever-recurring Nights of the Universe.
In reality these three aspects, these three categories of being, or the seven aspects into which they may be divided, are not separate, isolated natures, and their gradual unfolding does not constitute three different and distinct processes; all three are but phases, aspects, or facets, of the one Being in the evolution and involution of which consists the life of the universe.
When this trinity in unity is unfolded, expressed and manifested, the universe passes to Universal Day.
When the trinity in unity coalesces, unites and is re-absorbed, universal day gives place to universal night. In this universal night, there are no separate existences, no separate lives, no separate attributes; time, space, subjectivity, objectivity are no longer; from the standpoint of our thought there is nothing, because nothing is separate from the eternal, infinite All.
But behind this Universal Being which alternately expresses itself in manifestation, and re-absorbs itself into latency, there is another deeper mystery, so profound that human reason almost refuses to grasp it at all. This is the mystery of the Absolute.
As underneath the lump of metal, that in the jeweller’s hands takes many shapes, now melted to liquid, now hardened to solid, the mind conceives a certain quantity of gold, a quantity which remains unchanged, and which the mind regards abstractly as unchanging and unchangeable, even though the lump be separated into many pieces, or alloyed with other metals, or even powdered to dust and scattered on the face of the earth; so behind this evolving and involving universal life, which alternately expands and contracts in universal day and night, thought perceives the necessity of another universal being, the sum of the powers and forces of this (as the gold is the sum of the substance in the jeweller’s hands) and partaking neither in the evolution or involution of this, but remaining eternally changeless, motionless, attributeless, in the everlasting mystery of absolute Being.
The Abstract Unity, which contains within itself the potency of all life, but which has no life because it is all life; which contains within itself the potency of all consciousness, but has no consciousness because it is the totality of consciousness; which contains within itself the potency of all good and beauty and truth, but which is neither good nor beautiful nor true because it is absolute goodness, beauty and truth; which contains within itself the potency of all motion, all sound or colour and sensation, but is without motion, sound, colour or sensation; which contains within itself the potency of all attributes, but is without attributes because it is the totality of all attributes; this is the Absolute: the unknown and ever unknowable God.
C. J.
The True Church of Christ, Exoteric and Esoteric
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The Effects of Indian Hemp.
The effects produced by taking Indian Hemp have been put on record by competent observers, and the Hospital Gazette has given some interesting extracts on this subject. The reader will see that the early experiences of the drug-eater are delightful; but persistence in the habit ruins the health, and makes the “unwary an abandoned wreck”.
“The sense of limitation – of the confinement of our senses within the bounds of our own flesh and blood – instantly fell away. The walls of my frame were burst outward and tumbled into ruin; and without thinking what form I wore – losing sight even of all idea of form – I felt that I existed throughout a vast extent of space. The blood, pulsed from my heart, sped through uncounted leagues before it reached my extremities; the air drawn into my lungs expanded into seas of limpid ether, and the arch of my skull was broader than the vault of heaven. Within the concave that held my brain were the fathomless deeps of blue; clouds floated there, and the winds of heaven rolled them together, and there shone the orb of the sun. It was – though I thought not of that at the time – like a revelation of the mystery of omnipresence. It is difficult to describe this sensation, or the rapidity with which it mastered me. In the state of mental exhilaration in which I was then plunged, all sensations as they rose suggested more or less coherent images. They presented themselves to me in a double form; one physical, and therefore to a certain extent, tangible; the other spiritual, and revealing itself in a succession of brilliant metaphors. The physical feeling of extended being was accompanied by the image of an exploding meteor, not subsiding into darkness, but continuing to shoot from its centre or nucleus – which corresponded to the burning spot at the pit of my stomach – incessant adumbrations of light that, at last, finally lost themselves in the infinity of space.
“My curiosity was now in a way of being satisfied; the spirit (demon, shall I not rather say?) of hasheesh had entire possession of me. I was cast upon the flood of his illusions, and drifted helplessly whithersoever they might choose to bear me. The thrills which ran through my nervous system became more rapid and fierce, accompanied with sensations that steeped my whole being in unutterable rapture. I was encompassed by a sea of light, through which played the pure harmonious colours that are born of light. While endeavouring, in broken expressions, to describe my feelings to my friends, who sat looking at me incredulously, I suddenly found myself at the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. The tapering courses of yellow limestone gleamed like gold in the sun, and the pile rose so high that it seemed to lean for support upon the blue arch of the sky. I wished to ascend it, and the wish alone placed me immediately upon its apex, lifted thousands of feet above the wheat fields and palm groves of Egypt. I cast my eyes downward, and to my astonishment saw that it was built, not of limestone, but of huge square plugs of cavendish tobacco! Words cannot paint the overwhelming sense of the ludicrous which I then experienced. I writhed on my chair in an agony of laughter, which was only relieved by the vision melting away like a dissolving view; till out of my confusion of indistinct images, and fragments of images, another and more wonderful vision arose. I was moving over the desert, not upon the rocking dromedary, but seated in a barque, made of mother-of-pearl and studded with jewels of surpassing lustre. The sand was of grains of gold, and my keel slid through them without jar or sound. The air was radiant with excess of light, though no sun was to be seen. I inhaled the most delicious perfumes, and harmonies such as Beethoven may have heard in dreams, but never wrote, floated around me. The atmosphere itself was light, odour, and music; and each and all sublunated beyond anything the sober senses are capable of receiving. Before me, for a thousand leagues, as it seemed, stretched a vista of rainbows, whose colours gleamed with the splendour of gems – arches of living amethyst, sapphire, emerald, topaz, and ruby. By thousands, and tens of thousands, they flew past me, as my dazzling barge sped down the magnificent arcade; yet the vista still stretched as far as ever before me. I revelled in a sensuous elysium which was perfect, because no sense was left ungratified. But beyond all, my mind was filled with a boundless feeling of triumph. My journey was that of a conqueror – not of a conqueror who subdues his race either by love or by will, for I forgot that man existed – but one victorious over the grandest, as well as the subtlest, forces of nature. The spirits of light, colour, odour, sound, and motion were my slaves, and having these I was master of the universe. The fulness of my rapture expanded the sense of time; and though the whole vision was probably not more than five minutes in passing through my mind, years seemed to have elapsed while I shot under the dazzling myriads of rainbow arches.”
Life and Death
165
Gems from the Upanishads.
Om! Having settled down in a pure place let him, being pure himself, and firm in goodness, study the truth, speak the truth, think the truth, and offer sacrifice to the truth. Henceforth he has become another; by obtaining the reward of Brahman his fetters are cut asunder, he knows no hope, no fear from others as little as from himself, he knows no desires; and having attained imperishable, infinite happiness, he stands blessed in the true Brahman, who longs for a true man. Freedom from desires is, as it were, the highest prize to be taken from the best treasure (Brahman). For a man full of all desires, being possessed of will, imagination, and belief, is a slave, but he who is the opposite is free.
When a man, having freed his mind from sloth, distraction, and vacillation, becomes as it were delivered from his mind, that is the highest point.
That happiness which belongs to a mind which by deep meditation has been washed clean from all impurity and has entered within the Self, cannot be described here by words; it can be felt by the inward power only.
Mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberty for men; if attached to the world, it becomes bound; if free from the world, that is liberty.
He who is the person in the sun, I am he.
“O Saint, this body is without intelligence, like a cart. To what supernatural being belongs this great power by which such a body has been made intelligent? Or who is the driver? What thou knowest, O Saint, tell us that.”
Prajâpati answered and said: –
“He who in the Sruti is called ‘standing above’, like passionless ascetics amidst the objects of the world, he, indeed, the pure, clean, undeveloped, tranquil, breathless, bodiless, endless, imperishable, firm, everlasting, unborn, independent one, stands in his own greatness, and by him has this body been made intelligent, and he is also the driver of it. . . .
“That Self which is very small, invisible, incomprehensible, called Purusha, dwells of his own will here in part; just as a man who is fast asleep awakes of his own will. And this part (of the Self) which is entirely intelligent, reflected in man (as the Sun in different vessels of water),
166
knowing the body (Kshetrajña), attested by his conceiving, willing, and believing, is Prajâpati (lord of creatures), called Visva. By him, the intelligent, is this body made intelligent, and he is the driver thereof.”
In the beginning Prajâpati (the lord of creatures) stood alone. He had no happiness, when alone. Meditating on himself, he created many creatures. He looked on them and saw they were, like a stone, without understanding, and standing like a lifeless post. He had no happiness. He thought, I shall enter within, that they may awake. Making himself like air (vâyu), he entered within. Being one, he could not do it. Then dividing himself five-fold, he is called Prâna, Apâna, Samâna, Udâna, Vyâna.
There is indeed that other different one, called the elemental Self (Bhûtâtmâ), who, overcome by dark and bright fruit of action, enters on a good or bad birth: downward or upward is his course, and overcome by the pairs he roams about. And this is his explanation: The five Tanmâtras (sound, touch, form, taste, smell) are called Bhûta; also the five Mahâbhûtas (gross elements) are called Bhûta. Then the aggregate of all these is called Sarira, body. And lastly he of whom it was said that he dwelt in the body, he is called Bhûtâtmâ, the elemental Self. Thus his immortal Self is like a drop of water on a lotus leaf, and he himself is overcome by the qualities of nature. Then, because he is thus overcome, he becomes bewildered, and because he is bewildered, he saw not the creator, the holy Lord, abiding within himself. Carried along by the waves of the qualities, darkened in his imaginations, unstable, fickle, crippled, full of desires, vacillating, he enters into belief, believing “I am he,” “this is mine”; he binds his Self by his Self, as a bird with a net, and overcome afterwards by the fruits of what he has done, he enters on a good and bad birth; downward or upward is his course, and overcome by the pairs he roams about.
. . . . Because time is imperceptible by sense, therefore this, (the progress of the sun, &c.) is its evidence, and by it alone is time proved to exist. . . . .
Time ripens and dissolves all beings in the great Self, but he who knows into what time itself is dissolved, he is the knower of the Veda.
He who has his senses hidden as in sleep, and who, while in the cavern of his senses (his body) but no longer ruled by them, sees, as in a dream, with the purest intellect, Him who is called Pranava (Om), the leader, the bright, the sleepless, free from old age, from death, and sorrow, he is himself also called Pranava, and becomes a leader, bright, sleepless, free from old age, from death, and sorrow.
(From Max Müller's Translation.)
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Theosophical Activities.
The Indian Section is busily arranging for Annie Besant's prospective lecturing tour. It has sent out a notice to all members signed by the following well-known names: –
| R. Ragunath Rao. | Bhalchandra Krishna. |
| P. Shrinivasa Rao. | Norendronath Sen. |
| Udharam Mulchund. | Pandit Gopinath. |
| Tookaram Tatya. | Dinanath Ganguli. |
| N. D. Khandalavala. | C. L. Peacocke, Lieut., R.A. |
| Harisingji Rupsingji. | Dorabji Dossabhoy. |
| Pherozeshaw R. Mehta. | J. S. Gadgil. |
| A. D. Ezekiel. | Jehangir K. Daji. |
| K. M. Shroff. |
A new Branch has been formed at Ludhiana, Punjab, under the auspices of our brother Rai B. K. Laheri, who was lately in England, and is well-known to the members at Headquarters there. Our energetic and enthusiastic brother is having the Key translated into Hindi and Urdú.
The Ranchi Branch sends in a good report, and so also does the Poona Branch. We heartily congratulate the latter on the acquisition of their old president, our respected brother Khan Bahadur N. D. Khandalavala, who has been absent from Poona some five years.
The Blavatsky Lodge held its annual meeting on Saturday, October 3rd, in the Lecture Hall at Headquarters. The officers elected for the forthcoming year were as follows: – President, Annie Besant; Vice-President, Herbert Burrows; Secretary, Claude F. Wright; Assistant Secretaries, Thomas Green and J. C. Scoble; Treasurer, E. T. Sturdy. Additional members for Council: – the Countess Wachtmeister, Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, W. R. Old (Assist. Sec. Europ. S.), Major Hand. Delegates to serve at the Annual Convention of the European Section: – Herbert Burrows, T. Green, J. C. Scoble, Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, Major Hand, R. A. Machell, O. Hintze, P.W. Bullock, Jas. M. Pryse. Owing to the overcrowded Thursday meetings, it was proposed and carried that two meetings a week should be held, on Thursdays for associates and visitors, and on a night to be decided by the Council a Lodge meeting for members only. Voluntary subscriptions are to be still in force, although the financial condition of the Lodge was reported as the reverse of encouraging. The expenses of the Lodge are very heavy, but it was thought best to still trust to the generosity of members.
The new syllabus is as follows: –
Oct. 1. – “Reincarnation.” Annie Besant. Oct. 8. – “As ye Sow, so shall ye Reap.” Herbert Burrows. Oct. 15. – “Theosophy and Woman.” 168 Miss Müller, B.A. Oct. 22. – “Religions and Religion.” G. R.S. Mead. Oct. 29. – “Priesthoods; True and False.” Annie Besant. Nov. 5. – “Theosophical Conceptions of Compassion and Affection.” Mrs. Marshall. Nov. 12. – “Some Misconceptions about Theosophy.” Herbert Burrows. Nov. 19. – “Free-Masonry.” Dr. Wynn Westcott. Nov. 26. – “Civilisation; True and False.” Isabel Cooper Oakley. Dec. 3. – “Heaven and Hell.” Mrs. A. L. Cleather. Dec. 10. – “The Bhagavad Gîtâ.” E. T. Sturdy. Dec. 17. – “Theosophy and Art.” R.A. Machell. Dec. 24. – “The Law of Cycles.” W.R. Old. Dec. 31. – “The Christ Myth.” G. R. S. Mead.
At one Thursday meeting, although admission to the Lodge can only be had by ticket, as many as a hundred people had to be turned away, much to the regret of the Staff. But necessity is necessity, and “no more standing room” is the limit of the Lecture Hall. An overflow meeting was arranged in the Library.
Chiswick Lodge. – Mrs. Besant lectured at the Vestry Hall, Turnham Green, under the auspices of this Lodge, on Friday evening, the 2nd inst., the title of the lecture being “Theosophy and the Problems of Life”. The hall will seat between four and five hundred, but long before the time seven hundred had managed to gain admission, the arrangements for reserving seats having completely broken down owing to the crush and the fact that ticket holders had to be admitted by the same doors as those who were paying for admission; the platform was invaded, and even the window ledges outside the hall were taken possession of. The chair was taken at 8.30 by Bro. Kingsland, who in his opening remarks asked the audience to disabuse their minds of anything they might have read in the Daily Chronicle, or have heard of elsewhere on the subject of Theosophy, and confine their attention to the particular aspect which Mrs. Besant would present that evening. Mrs. Besant, who spoke for more than an hour with great energy, and who was frequently applauded and carried her audience with her on almost every point, dealt with the subject of Theosophy in its relation to social conditions and individual progress, and pointed out specifically the applications of the doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma. The questions at the close of the lecture were very numerous, and the answers were well received. The Daily Chronicle gave a good report of the meeting next day.
The Croydon Lodge is the direct outcome of a lecture delivered by Mrs. Besant to the “Croydon Socratic Society” in January last. A nucleus was formed in the first place by a kind donation of books from the Countess Wachtmeister. The library acted as a connecting link between those interested in the subject, and in May last the first meeting was held to hear Mr. Johnson, of Brixton, expound Theosophy, the interest then shown in the subject resulting in the formation of a lodge. During its three months’ existence good progress has been made, and attendance at the meetings has doubled. A good syllabus of lectures has been provided for three months. Mrs. Besant’s second lecture in Croydon in the large Public Hall was crowded beyond standing room, and has done much to stimulate public interest. The report of the lecture in the Observer has been printed as a leaflet for distribution. We had also a full Lodge when the General Secretary lectured on the “Theosophical Movement”.
The Lodge has adopted the system of holding private meetings for study, and the interchange of ideas amongst members. They will be held at fortnightly intervals, alternately with the open nights, and the Key to Theosophy will be first taken up. The general tone of the branch is healthy, its members showing an increasing interest, and a marked tendency to discourage phenomena-seeking. The Lodge has to acknowledge its great indebtedness to the Brixton Lodge for its help and sympathy.
169 The Bournemouth Centre is reading the Key to Theosophy and discussing it chapter by chapter.
The Frome Centre meets for discussion every Sunday morning, and addresses are delivered on Theosophical subjects. Literature and pamphlets are distributed and lent, and letters written to the local papers.
The Folkestone Centre has been very busy since Annie Besant’s lecture in the Town Hall, and arranged a meeting in the Masonic Hall, where G. R. S. Mead lectured on Reincarnation to an appreciative audience.
A Public Reading Room was opened on October 1st at 7, Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C., by the Countess Wachtmeister. It will be open to the public daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sundays excepted. Admission is 2d.; and the subscription is 10s. for 12 months, 6s. for 6 months, 3s. 6d. for 3 months, and 1s. 6d. for 1 month.
The new reading room will pave the way to much activity; nearly every evening already is filled up with prospective meetings and classes. A new Lodge is to be formed, to be called the “Adelphi Lodge”, which will hold its meetings in the Reading Room on Monday evenings.
The League of Theosophical Workers has already five Branches, and has had to print a leaflet of its own to report its activities. A debating class and elementary classes are being formed. A working man’s club and a “Crèche” for children are in embryo. A sewing class, mothers’ meetings, correspondence and reading circles are also in course of formation. A labour bureau and servants’ registry free of fees have been started at the East End Club. Quantities of food and clothing have been sent to Workington in Cumberland, where 5,000 men are out of employment owing to a failure of the iron works. 200 girls were taken for a trip to the country from the Bow Club, and though rain fell steadily the girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The trip cost £18 2s. 6d., and the expenses were met by subscriptions from friends and a very small payment from each of the girls.
An East End member is informed by an inmate of one of the largest London Workhouses that he read one of our leaflets to some of his fellow inmates and that it excited the greatest interest and enquiry. In consequence of this a member of the Headquarters Staff has visited the Workhouse, has been warmly welcomed, and is arranging for a weekly visit.
The Press. – Press cuttings pour steadily into the General Secretary's office at the rate of about a thousand a month, and bear testimony to the enormous interest and curiosity of the public. Every degree of opinion is expressed from appreciative leaders to virulent and abusive letters, which are mostly anonymous. On the whole, the attention of the public is thoroughly aroused, and enquiries keep pouring in. The correspondence in the Daily Chronicle ran from August 30th to October 1st.
Annie Besant has had monster audiences at all of her lectures, the halls being packed beyond standing room. Since September 15th she has lectured at Croydon, Brixton, Milton Hall (twice), Folkestone, South Shields (three times), Athenaeum Hall (Tottenham Court Road), Chiswick, St. James's Hall, and Glasgow (three times).
Glasgow. – A Theosophical Book Exchange is being started in order to stimulate and facilitate the circulation of Theosophical literature, and provide all Theosophical students, but especially fellows of the Theosophical Society, with facilities for obtaining and disposing of books, etc., by exchange or sale and purchase.
Any person wishing to buy, sell, or exchange Theosophical literature is invited to send particulars to Mr. F. W. D’Evelyn (25, Holyrood Quadrant), 170 who will endeavour to provide a buyer, or exchanger, or a seller of the books wanted, as the case may be.
In sending lists of books for disposal, the author's name, title, publisher, date, published price, condition and price (or exchange) wanted should be stated. In the case of lists of books wanted, the title and author’s name will suffice, unless any particular edition is required. In the case of exchanges, if individual books are to be exchanged for certain other individual books only, particulars should be clearly stated, and correspondents are requested to price their books so as to include postage. Exchanges or sales will be effected directly between correspondents, or through Mr. D’Evelyn, as may be most convenient.
Previous to his leaving the European Headquarters on his journey home viâ the United States and Japan, the President-Founder paid a short visit to Sweden. He went by Hull and Göteborg to Stockholm, and returned viâ Copenhagen, Hamburg, Bremen, and Flushing. The Colonel reports that he found the Swedish Branch even more commendable than he had supposed, full of zeal, good feeling and earnestness. The three days of his visit were naturally very busy: on September 8th he attended a meeting of the Branch, and on the 9th lectured in the Hall of the Academy of Sciences. H.M. the King, who is probably the most cultured of European monarchs, and who presided over the last Congress of Orientalists, through the intervention of the American ambassador, granted Colonel Olcott a special private audience and conversed with him for about an hour on Theosophical and cognate subjects. Our Swedish members gave the President a most hospitable welcome and we hear of suppers, conversaziones and farewell dinners.
The Dutch-Belgian Branch reports that it has its hands full of work, and has had to modify its Rules to meet the increased strain. The officers for the ensuing year are: President, Mme. H. Neufville; Vice-President, Mme. Meuleman; Secretary and Treasurer, Mr. Fricke. Fortnightly meetings are held for members only, and on the alternate weeks there are meetings for visitors. One of the members, who wishes to remain unknown, has provided a sum to start a small Theosophical monthly in Dutch, chiefly for publishing the translation of The Key. League work is also being actively taken up by the Lodge.
Le Siège Français has got a capital local at Paris, consisting of a Secretary’s office, a reading-room, and a bed-room for the accommodation of Theosophists passing through Paris. Le Lotus Bleu, as we have elsewhere remarked, is immensely improved. A library is established, and the books of the T.P.S. are on sale. Tirages à part are being struck off, and everything is going forward most busily. All we want now is the ungrudging co-operation of our French members, who will find the Secretary, Mons. E. Coulomb, our old friend and fellow-worker, worthy of their confidence and approbation. The address is 14, rue Chaptal.
The Barcelona Group, we are glad to learn, are manifesting oratorical faculties. The following lectures have been given: “The Constitution of Man”, by Bro. Roviralta; “Reincarnation”, by Bro. Prats; “Elementaries”, by Bro. Cembrano; “Theosophy and Socialism”, by Bro. Ferrer,
171 The Madrid Group have completed the translations of Mr. Isaacs, by Marion Crawford, The Bhagavad Gîtâ (American Edition), and “Letters that have helped me”, from the Path. The translation of the Secret Doctrine has been commenced, and the group is beginning a course of study in the Key. Bro. Florencio Pol has published and distributed in Galicia an admirable leaflet entitled Luz (Light).
Our friend and colleague, W. Q. Judge, is working hard on the Pacific Coast, and the Pacific Coast Committee send us the following: –
Thursday and Friday, September 24th and 25th, Mr. Judge will spend in San Francisco; Saturday, 26th, he will visit Oakland; Sunday, 27th, he will lecture in Oakland at Fraternity Hall, Washington Street, near 13th, 3 p.m., and in San Francisco at Odd Fellows’ Hall, cor. 7th and Market Streets, 7.30 p.m., subject of the lecture for each place being: “Theosophy – What it is and What it is Not”. Monday, 28th, he will lecture in San Francisco, at Irving Hall, 7.30 p.m. Subject: “Reincarnation”. Tuesday, 29th, he will visit and lecture in Alameda; Wednesday, 30th, he will reach Santa Cruz, remaining there until Friday, Oct. 2nd, and giving one or more public lectures. Friday, 2nd, he will arrive in Gilroy, remaining until Saturday afternoon, lecturing one or more times in the interim, and then leaving for San José. Saturday afternoon and Sunday forenoon, 3rd and 4th, he will spend in San José, lecturing Sunday forenoon in that city. He will then leave the same afternoon for San Francisco, arriving in time to lecture at Odd Fellows’ Hall, 7.30 p.m. Subject: “Karma and Ethics”. Monday, 5th, he will lecture before the Progressive Thinkers’ Association, at Berkeley. He will leave San Francisco Tuesday, Oct. 6th, at 8 a.m., arriving in Sacramento same day, remaining until Thursday and giving one or more lectures. Thursday, 8 a.m., he will leave Sacramento for Stockton, remaining there until Saturday, 10th, lecturing, etc. Saturday, 10th, he leaves for Los Angeles direct, arriving in that city Sunday, 11th, in time to lecture in the evening. From Sunday, Oct. 11th, to Saturday, Oct. 17th, he will remain in Los Angeles, lecturing there, and in Ventura, Pasadena, Anaheim and Villa Park, etc., as the local Committees may arrange. Saturday, 17th, he leaves Los Angeles for San Diego, and remains in the latter city until the 23rd, visiting San Bernardino in the interim. Sunday, Oct. 24th, he will be en route for San Francisco, and by stopping over one train will have an opportunity to lecture in Fresno, if desired. Sunday, Oct. 25th, he will give his last lecture on the Coast, in San Francisco, at Odd Fellows’ Hall, the subject being: “The Inner Constitution of Man”.
The Blavatsky T.S. have established a permanent Headquarters on the lines of the Headquarters at London and Dublin. Several members have banded together to take a house; and accommodation is to be provided for visiting members and speakers.
The Path reports two losses to the Society through death. Mrs. Alice M. Wyman, Secretary of the Brahmana T.S., of Milwaukee, and Dr. John S. F. Gray, President of the Point Loma Lodge, T.S., San Diego, Calif., have left us. The body of Mrs. Wyman was cremated. Both members were held in the highest esteem by their respective Lodges, an esteem that was won by their nobility of character and compassionate natures.
We regret to see that The Path copies an absurd statement from the Ceylon local press. Bertram Keightley is reported to have taken pansil and become a convert to the exoteric religion of Buddhism. This is entirely untrue; as Bertram Keightley himself informed us, he took pains to avoid 172 the ceremony when the late Miss Pickett received pansil, as he suspected that the press would seize the slightest opportunity to report him a Buddhist.
Immediately on the arrival of Colonel Olcott at New York he was interviewed by the representatives of the press at Astor House. The results of these interviews appear in the columns of the principal newspapers of the city, with the usual eccentric and hysterical headlines that the American press loves so well.
The League of Theosophical Workers has an ample list of activity to report, and the newspapers have given very favourable notices of its good deeds. Some of the items are as follows: – a picnic into the country for forty boys; six working girls sent to the country for two weeks; League restaurant; a singing class, and two domestic libraries. In addition there are other acts of kindness that cannot be placed under distinct headings. There are now seven Leagues.
“This Department of our work was set on foot in the U.S. with the object of bringing about a closer union between the East and the West, by giving our American members a more complete knowledge of India than they could otherwise obtain. The example has been followed in Europe, where the new European Section has started a similar activity.
“In order to make the work more uniform, the European Convention directed its Secretary to endeavour to have the American Oriental Department act in concurrence with the European, and this will no doubt be done. As the General Secretary here has been enabled to secure the services of a pundit in India, it will be easy to transmit to Europe paper matrices of the matter set up here, and the Blavatsky Press can cast metal stereos so that the two issues may correspond.
“As the Adyar Oriental Library is gradually growing in importance, that may also be regarded as a part of our Oriental Work, and it is purposed to utilise it as much as possible. Indeed, if circumstances had permitted it, the pundit secured for us would have resided there, so that it might be made the central office for this branch of the Society’s activity. But all this will come in time. With such great distances between us it is difficult to perfect our system quickly, and racial differences of method have also delayed us slightly in the beginning. As time goes on, all defects will be corrected and greater efficiency acquired.
“Nor should our members judge the Oriental Department by the issues already published, for they have been necessarily hurried and somewhat imperfect in form. Indeed, there are so many difficulties to overcome that some time must elapse before everything will be running smoothly. Our funds as yet will not permit the employment of an American with the ability and time to thoroughly examine each issue so as to find and correct every error in style, fact, or transliteration and translation of words. As the General Secretary’s entire time is already engrossed, as well as that of his staff, mistakes will creep in because of the ease with which words in a foreign language, carelessly indited, may be misunderstood. But as we have not yet claimed to be Orientalists, any slurs cast upon the Department can be easily passed aside. Time, which proves all things, will prove this enterprise to be of use and value, or will show the necessity of giving it up. The latter contingency is not regarded as possible.
Prof. Manilal N. Dvivedi, with whose name our readers are so familiar, has been engaged as the Pundit of the Department. The European Section has united with the American Section in this desire to introduce the thought of the East into the West, and arrangements are now completed for reproducing Prof. Dvivedi's articles by means of stereos.
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Theosophical and Mystic Publications.
The Theosophist for September starts with a digest of the report of the last Convention of the European Section. Rama Prasad continues his papers on “Astrology” by contributing a very curious theory which will scare our philologists. He contends “that every word has its origin in the sun, and that the connection of a word with its sense is a solar act”. The idea is naturally startling to the West; but students of Eastern science who know of the sphota and sâbda doctrines will understand the contention of our learned brother. E. T. Sturdy follows with a carefully thought-out paper entitled “Three Aspects of the Theosophical Movement”; he deals with it in India, Europe and America, and takes a glance also at Australasia. C.R. Shrinivasayangar shows in “What are we here for?” that if we want to escape the necessity of passing through every experience at first hand, we should extend the area of our experience by cultivating sympathy for others. The “Tejo-Bindu Upanishad of the Krishna-Yajur Veda” is one of the most magnificent that has yet been translated. Its key-note is the one-ness of all things, and the refrain of the grand spiritual pæan is “I am Brahm”. Dr. Carter Blake defends the methods of the pioneers of Anthropology against the present school, and shows how the teachings of the Secret Doctrine must eventually revolutionise this science. The next paper, “Relationship between Australians and Indians in Religion and Race” by Dr. A. Carroll, A.M., the energetic General Secretary of our new Australasian Section, is one of solid value, written by an authority. It shows the knowledge of a wealth of facts and evidence of much study and research. Among much of interest we select the following: –
Metempsychosis is believed in by the Australians as by those in Asia. The ancient songs now sung by Australian tribes over 1,500 miles of country are not changed by all the varying dialects over these distances, so that one verse causes the elders to take it up and continue it in exactly the proper words, although they have lost their meaning and cannot translate them.”
Can no one make a collection of these poetical relics of the Lemuro-Atlanteans? The paper by A. Nilakanta Sastri on “The Signs of the Zodiac” is one of the most suggestive studies of esoteric correspondences we have seen for a long time. The relations of the twelve to the seven and the secret of Subba Row’s quadruple division are clearly shown. The symbolism of “Om” is treated of, and the whole paper is one of the greatest possible interest for students of esotericism. The number is completed by the conclusion of the article of Nakur Chandra Bisvas on “Tulsi Das”.
The Path for September first introduces us to a paper on “The Allegory of the Cup” by Katharine Hillard, in which Rabelais’ Shrine of the Divine Bottle, and the Eucharist and Graal legends are laid under contribution. The next paper, “One of Many”, is a humorous sketch, giving a concrete example of the ignorance that aspires to “adeptship” before it has learnt the rudiments of decency. It is by our esteemed colleague A. Fullerton, and will serve as a useful object lesson. W. Q. J. continues his instructive “Hidden Hints” in the Secret Doctrine, and E. T. S. writes thoughtfully on “Love”. Harij contributes his concluding paper on the “Loss of the Soul”, thus completing an interesting series of articles on an obscure but very important subject. Sree Kali Prasanna Mukopadhyana contributes some facts as to conscious existence after death and before birth, gleaned from the lips of children. “Tea Table Talk” is very interesting, and deals with the strange fact that the T.S. is stronger by the departure of “H.P.B.” instead of weaker. It has taught all the lesson of self-reliance. Speaking of receiving communication from the Masters, X. says,
“When a plant is mildewed, devoured, broken, growing awry, the head-gardener or some one of his authorised assistants comes to its aid, or some few especial plants, doing especial service in the garden, may receive especial stimulus, such as would injure others. But when a plant is following all the actual
174
laws of growth, it requires no readjustment, it does not hear from the gardener, who knows it is doing well. In the East the Guru or Teacher is called Re-adjuster. And He may communicate with some sub-centre already established, which sub-centre is to give out the help thus extended to those working in the same line.”
The Buddhist prints an interesting communication from a “Seshwara Sankhya” (a follower of the Sankhya philosophy from the deistic point of view) with comments thereon by the editor. The point at issue is as to the real meaning of certain terms used in Sankhya philosophy and also in Buddhism. The Buddhist editor contends “the terms and phrases he (Gautama) borrowed from Brahmanism were applied by him in different senses from those in which they had been originally used, in order to adapt them to and harmonize them with the system of moral philosophy which he brought out by the unaided force of his intellect”. The keenest criticism that Buddhism has had to face is that of the Hindu Pandits, but we hope that if controversy again arises it will be something more than a war of words. The Buddhist reprints Mr. Stead’s part of the “Character Sketch” on H.P.B. from the Review of Reviews, and H.P.B.’s article on “Civilization, the Death of Art and Beauty” from Lucifer.
Le Lotus Bleu for September appears in an entirely new shape and cover. Under the management of our old friend and colleague, E. Coulomb (Amaravella), the magazine has suddenly doubled its importance and worth. “La Théosophie; ce qu’elle est et ce qu'elle n'est pas” is an article of solid worth, and written with all the fire and elegance of Amaravella. We hope that it will be reproduced in pamphlet form and widely distributed. “Le Mouvement théosophique” is also an article of worth and will give the readers of Le Lotus Bleu a capital idea of the present position and scope of the movement. Dr. Hartmann has an interesting article on “Cremation”, which was delivered in the form of a lecture before the Vienna Scientific Club. A capital digest entitled “Introduction à l’étude de la Doctrine Secrète”, by “Un Disciple”, completes the best number of Le Lotus Bleu that has yet appeared. The new cover is not an entirely happy choice, but exteriors after all are not essentials.
The Forum, No. 27, is departing from its calm judicious spirit, and we regret to see its pages monopolized for the airing of private fads. The views of all Theosophists should have a fair chance in its pages.
The Vahan, though covering familiar ground, is interesting. Some people may think that the questions occasionally deal with subjects of insufficient sublimity; but that is just the province of the Vâhan. People want to hear more of Theosophy in everyday life, and are often supremely indifferent to the abstruse and recondite enquiries that our metaphysicians delight in.
The Prasnottara, No. 8, is a weak number, the majority of the answers being below the average. The tendency to use the Shâstras literally is to be most sternly deprecated.
Theosophical Siftings, Vol. IV., No. 11, presents its readers with some more information about “Keely’s Discoveries”. Mrs. Bloomfield Moore is the compiler and devotes most of the space at her disposal to a panegyric on her conception of “God”. This is to be regretted, for the public desire to hear about “Keely’s Discoveries”, and as the editor of the T.P.S. remarks, “Keely is certainly dealing with a subtle force, but neither he nor humanity are any nearer to the solution of the problem of deity simply on that account”. It is a relief to turn to what Keely says himself, but still we must confess our inability so far to sufficiently understand him in his interesting themes. Among other things Mr. Keely tells us what electricity is, but the nomenclature baffles us. Here is the secret: –
“Electricity is the result of three differentiated sympathetic flows, combining the celestial and terrestrial flows by an order of assimilation negatively attractive in its character. It is one of Nature's efforts to restore attractive differentiation.”
Estudios Teosoficos translates the “Dialogue on the Constitution of the Inner Man”, by H.P.B., from the early numbers of Lucifer.
Pauses, Vol. I, No. 1, presents us with yet another theosophical magazine. It is the child of our industrious and energetic brethren of Bombay and especially of the indefatigable activity of our colleague, C. L. Peacocke. The cover is light blue with a large seal of the T.S. in dark blue and the word “Pauses” running diagonally across the centre in ornamental letters composed of serpents. It states its object as follows, viz., “to supply men and women with material for 175 thought, and to guide into a fitting channel those vague aspirations to know the why and wherefore of the great problems of life and nature, which assail during the Pauses that occur after a surfeit of work or amusement”. The contributions are partly original and partly reprints, the press work is decidedly above the average for India, and on the whole we may congratulate ourselves on a most useful and sensible addition to our magazine list.
Branch Work, Indian Section: Paper 8, is a careful summary by “C. L. P.” on “The Septenary Constitution of Man”.
The New Californian still keeps up a distinctly theosophic character and is almost entirely filled with contributions by members of the T.S. In particular we notice two capital articles on “Theosophy and Spiritualism” by Allen Griffiths, and on “Reincarnation” by Dr. Jerome A. Anderson.
The Rose Garden, under the auspices of Mrs. Ida Arnold Budd, continues its pleasant task of instructing children in the a b c of Theosophy, by reprinting H.P.B.'s translation of Tolstoi’s charming story of Martuin Avdyéitch, entitled “Where Love is, there God is also”, and other simple tales and poetical extracts. The address of the Editor is removed from El Paso, Texas, to Apartado Postal 71, San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
Theosophy and Its Evidences, price 3d., by Annie Besant, has reached its eighth thousand, and is proving its utility by its rapid sale.
The Mahabharata is being translated into English by Pratapa Chandra Ray, C.I.E. We have received a copy of Part lxvii. and await the rest of the series for review. Meanwhile we beg to inform our readers that copies are to be obtained from the Manager of the Dâtavya Bhârata Kâryâlaya, 1, Râjâ Gooroo Dass’ Street, Calcutta, but are unable to inform them of the price.
Inexistencia de la Materia: “The non-existence of matter, and essence and vital processes of Absolute Being”, is a 24 page pamphlet, 8vo, in Spanish, by our Brother D. Florencio Pol. It is not technically Theosophical, but leads up to our position from a Christian and scientific point of view. Senor Pol believes that all space is force, and looks upon deity as a universally diffused cosmic force.
“The Absolute Substance is intelligent and spiritual; and while it manifests its infiniteness by the absolute infinity of the exactly spiritual modes, we are not able, without abandoning the idea of its absolute infinity, to substract from this law phenomenal matter.”
The writer is exceeding courteous to everybody, though not very accurate in his metaphysics.
1875 to 1891 (A Fragment of Autobiography), by Annie Besant. This is the title of the lecture delivered at the Hall of Science, and which was the immediate cause of the present excited controversy in the public press. The publishers are the Theosophical Publishing Society; it is printed on the “H.P.B. Press”, and the price is 2d.
The Agnostic Annual reaches us so late that we can only notice the fact that the articles from Prof. Huxley and Dr. Momerie should suffice to give it a wide circulation. Prof. Huxley's article will give a rude shock to the cruder type of unbelievers who, out of the fulness of their ignorance, deny the possibility of events which are unusual; Prof. Huxley contents himself with demanding evidence for the happening of an event, and with declining to believe until he obtains it.
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Our Budget.
Donations to the General Fund of the European Section
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wastall, A. | 0 | 10 | 0 | Kilburn, Mrs. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Neufville, Mme. de | 1 | 3 | 0 | Oppermann, M. A. | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| S. G. P. C. | 0 | 2 | 0 | Bright, Miss E. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Bruce, Mrs. L. | 1 | 1 | 0 | Green, H. S. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Bowring, Miss | 0 | 15 | 0 | Hawkins, Mrs. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Bradford Lodge | 1 | 0 | 0 | Harding, Miss | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Sturdy, E. T. | 0 | 10 | 0 | ||||
| Mead, G.R.S. | 0 | 10 | 0 | ||||
| Scott, Mrs. | 0 | 15 | 0 | ||||
| 20 | 1 | 0 | |||||
E. T. Sturdy,
Treasurer.
Sangamitta Girls’ School Fund.
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amount already acknowledged | 31 | 1 | 0 | S. E. G. (Fal.) | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| W. G. W. | 5 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| Finch, G. R. | 10 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| 46 | 3 | 6 | |||||
E. Kislingbury,
Treasurer.
H.P.B. Memorial Fund.
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amounts already subscribed or promised (frs. 59) | 126 | 16 | 6 | Kilburn, Mrs. | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Norderling, Mme. | 0 | 10 | 0 | S. E. G. (Fal.) | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| “M.” | 2 | 0 | 0 | Musgrave, G. | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Putz, Mrs. | 0 | 10 | 0 | Thomas, E. M. | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Birger, A. | 0 | 5 | 0 | Gordon, Mrs. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| X. | 0 | 3 | 0 | K. S. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Montigny-le-Tilleul Group | 0 | 8 | 0 | Van Notten, Mme. | 0 | 4 | 6 |
| Williams, Mrs. | 2 | 10 | 0 | ||||
| Crossley, Mrs. | 5 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| 145 | 0 | 6 | |||||
G. R. S. Mead,
Secretary.
Headquarters’ Building Fund.
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deficiency from last account | 167 | 3 | 6 | |||
| Surplus from Lecture at St. George’s Hall | 16 | 11 | 4 | |||
| Part surplus of Croydon lectures, sent by Croydon Lodge | 3 | 3 | 0 | |||
| Half surplus of Brixton lectures, sent by Brixton Liberal Club | 2 | 7 | 0 | |||
| Surplus from Folkestone lecture | 4 | 7 | 6 | |||
| Half surplus of Chiswick lectures, sent by Chiswick Lodge | 9 | 0 | 0 | |||
| D. A. Courmes | 1 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 36 | 8 | 10 | ||||
| Deficiency | 130 | 14 | 8 |
Annie Besant,
Treasurer.
N.B. – In all cases in which “part” or “half” surplus is given, the remainder has been retained by the Lodge or Club for its local fund.
No. 51 – November 1891
177 The Editor does not hold herself responsible for any opinions, whether religious, philosophical or social, expressed in signed articles.
Mysticism, True and False.
Mysticism! It is a word that includes within its sweep the noblest aspirations and the wildest dreamings of mankind – the yearnings of man after Ideal Perfection, the wallowings of man in the foulest mire of psychic imaginings. Than the true Mystic there is no loftier type; than the false Mystic there is no baser possibility. The height or the depth of human nature lies in the one word.
For the Mystic belongs not to the physical plane: for good or for evil he has quitted the safe and homely haunts of human life. He has stepped aside from the common roads of men, and has passed into a strange and unknown country. Out of the Hall of Ignorance into which he was born, the ignorance in which his race still dwells unknowing, he has crossed into the perilous Hall of Learning, where indeed are to be gathered many “blossoms of Life, but under every flower a serpent coiled”. Will he pass through it to the “Hall of Wisdom, the Hall which lies beyond, wherein all shadows are unknown, and where the light of Truth shines with unfading glory”? Or will he linger in the Hall of Learning? The warning sounds out clearly:
“This Hall is dangerous in its perfidious beauty, is needed but for thy probation. Beware, Lanoo, lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light.
“This light shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer. The senses it bewitches, blinds the mind, and leaves the unwary an abandoned wreck.”
178 One condition is imperative for all who would enter the Hall of Wisdom, who would learn the lessons of the Higher Life.
“That which is uncreate abides in thee, Disciple, as it abides in that Hall. If thou wouldst reach it and blend the two, thou must divest thyself of thy dark garments of illusion. Stifle the voice of flesh, allow no image of the senses to get between its light and thine, that thus the twain may blend in one.”
False Mysticism remains in the Hall of Learning, entangled in the coils of the serpent of evil, dazzled by the false delusive glow of the Lower Astral Light. True Mysticism dwells in the Hall of Wisdom, in the pure and serene radiance of the light of truth, borne up to heights of knowledge by the soaring pinions of the Dragon of Wisdom, and leaving far below all image of the senses, all echoes of the voice of flesh.
Now there is one clear distinction between true and false Mysticism, and it lies in the idea above suggested. True Mysticism is pure, calm, untouched by earthly desire; false Mysticism is hot, passionate, sensuous, filled with various delights. White as the snow-capped mountains is the one; gorgeous as tropical valley is the other, filled with vivid-hued flowers and strong, rich fragrances that make men swoon.
In all times and in all places false Mysticism has been the parent of eroticism, and many are the sects of Christians who have lost their way in this luxuriant jungle of the senses, and have been drugged to sleep by the poison-dropping branches of this ancient Upas-tree. How many have sung the Song of Solomon, translating its sensuous images into so-called spiritual, but really psychic delights, and revelling in the passionate language, suited indeed for the marriage-song of an Eastern monarch, but wholly inappropriate to express the longings of the intellect for union with the spirit, of Manas with Atma-Buddhi.
There is a certain danger at the present time that Theosophy, on the mystical side of its philosophy, may be assailed in ignorance by the uninstructed, or in malice by the evilly-disposed, as though it had aught in common with this false Mysticism, which deifies sex, glorifies sexual emotions, and transferring them to the psychic plane renders them tenfold more alluring and a hundredfold more dangerous than they are on the physical plane to which they properly belong. In ignorance or in malice, Theosophy may be confounded with the school based on the teaching of Mr. Thomas Lake Harris, the school of which the late Laurence Oliphant was one of the most brilliant adherents. Those who have read “Scientific Religion” and “Sympneumata” will have felt how subtlely sensuous are the ideas that 179 pervade both; and those who know anything of the practical side of Laurence Oliphant’s teachings will need no words of mine to make them realise the deadly nature of the food offered to – heaven save the mark! – the human spirit. Those who let themselves be led by such a guide would surely reach the most Kamic divisions of the psychic plane, peopled by the foulest images that the human mind could conceive.
But it is best to judge the school by the writings of its founder, and T. L. Harris has placed within the hands of the public quite sufficient of his teachings to enable us to judge of their drift. In a book “Privately Printed”, and audaciously entitled “The Wisdom of the Adepts – Esoteric Science in Human History”, we may read Mr. Harris’ views of higher states of being than our own, and from such reading we rise with an overpowering sense of nausea, almost inclined to take a dose of Zola in order that a frank animality, which is by comparison clean, may wash away the far worse filth of a hideous psychism. The keynote is the “Divine-Human Twain-One”, alias male-female, and in harmony with this we are introduced to a “celestial man of the earth’s first Golden Age”, or a Deva. This Deva is a compound of a man and a woman, and he remarks:
“Behold one for an illustration; a man, yet a woman, a woman but a man. Now when you describe man according to his constitution, the woman of me laughs and is pleased; and she delights that a man should be delineated, seeing that he is made in the likeness of the Lord God. Now when a man is pleased, he takes delight from the form and style of his wife: he explores her beauties and is enraptured, because he observes in her constitution the likeness of the Lady of God. This is well.”
This is exceedingly ill, and I do not propose to quote Mr. Thomas Lake Harris’ words at any length; it will be enough to convey the sense, more or less. After this exordium a “Deva-ess” evolves from the Deva, both being undraped, and the Deva explains that God dwells in him in the form of manhood to his wife, and dwells in her in the form of womanhood to him, and so on. Devachan is “a state of involved delights”, and the whole description is full of diseased sensuality; man is made man in the “structure of the spiritual personality and of its spiritual soul”, and woman woman, so that Devachan becomes a highly coloured paradise of the Moslem type, “hymeneal festivals”, “exquisite embraces”, well deserving the stern comment passed on the description by a Master, “unclean and false utterly”.
We are then given an account of the “educative processes of the Illuminate, the Secret Fraternity”, and find them to be of the sort that might be surmised from the preceding pages. The hierophant is a “man-woman”, and there are the Divine Man and the Divine Woman, the Husband Truth and the Wife Truth; then the neophyte is ecstacised and enjoys “hitherto unfelt delights”, “blissful peace” 180 “Womanhood of God”, and what not. And so on, up to Nirvana (!) there is the male-female, till we seem to be in the midst of a sensual orgy, and are sickened and disgusted with the degradation of noble thoughts and the besmearing of lofty ideals.
The training of the priests is as loathsome as the rest of it, with the houses of God with their “Bowers of Love-the-Lord” for bridal pairs, and ceremonies that might more fitly find description in a French novel on demi-monde life than in a book that pretends to deal with spiritual things. Naturally indeed does T. L. Harris attack the “cold” Adepts of India, for those lofty and serene spiritual Intelligences have nought in common with his ecstacies of psychic lust; “the source of the origination of the psychic germ is the nuptial chamber of the Bridal Word. We are formed to live in God, as lover-loveress, husband-wife: in this one-twainness we are made the ever-living bridal temples of the Infinite. We are in-nuptialised into God; we are thence out-nuptialised into humanity.” Always this mania for dwelling on the sex-idea; no thought that does not centre in sex, revolve round sex.
Other works of Mr. Harris are full of the same poison. His descriptions of life in other spheres are mere descriptions of sexual pleasures. We read of a “Sister-Spirit” who is, of course, entrancingly lovely on physical lines, who offers to lead a brother
“Where Beauty sits in groves of asphodel, |
The light is of course “roseate”; for we learn from Ouida that ladies of this type always affect rose-coloured curtains. The planet Mars is “an Eden of conjugal affection”, and we are introduced to a “blessed pair”, a “fair-haired girl” and her bridegroom “splendour-eyed”. Mr. Harris would make a fortune as a writer of novels for nursemaids: a splendour-eyed young man would indeed fulfil the dreams of the female breast. The further descriptions of Mars would be somewhat too highly coloured, I fear, even for the novel. The planet Jupiter is no more respectable; Mercury is given over to a school of Love, and if Mr. Harris be a true seer, any unlucky creature who is conscious of being something more than an embodied sensual appetite will find no place in the universe where he can rest. Everywhere he will have dinned into his ears warblings and sighings, till he will long for annihilation as the only escape from lust that is naked and not ashamed.
I have been driven into this investigation of Mr. Thomas Lake Harris’ theories by an attack made upon them by Dr. Stanton Coit, who, by some carelessness of phrase led some of his congregation to imagine that Theosophy and Mr. Harris had something in common.
181 I wrote to Dr. Stanton Coit a note of enquiry, asking if he had so misrepresented Theosophy as to connect it with eroticism in any way: before receiving my note he had – hearing the complaint made to me – sent me the following:
I have been reported to you, so a friend informs me, as having said in a recent lecture that “the Theosophists taught and practised indecency”. I never said any such thing, even of Laurence Oliphant (on whom I was lecturing). I said I believed that he and Mrs. Oliphant were perfectly pure, and that their doctrine would probably never lead to any outward immorality; but I maintained that it was wrong to interpret the deity and the spiritual emotions in terms of sex.
Please feel at liberty to use this letter to refute the false report, if there is any tendency for it to spread.
Yours truly, Stanton Coit.
It is obvious to anyone who knows anything of Madame Blavatsky’s writings and of Theosophical teachings, that their whole tendency is towards the destruction of the sex-instinct instead of towards its deification. All Eastern training in Occultism has asceticism for its keynote (the dangers of the psychic plane being so well known), and this fact has been levelled against it as a reproach. Those who knew H. P. Blavatsky while she was with us, know how ruthlessly she trampled on the slightest indication of transferring sex to the astral plane, while she would have gazed in speechless contempt at anyone who would have ventured to bring the idea into the realms of “spirit”. Her distaste for “psychism” was largely based on the fact that emotion enters into it, and the Kamic element is strong, so opening the way to the befouling of the mind with sense-impressions. Cold, calm, severe, is the Mysticism of the East, for it seeks the Higher Ego and the Spirit, which are sexless, and it regards sex as a mere temporary expression on the physical plane of the “pairs of opposites”, an expression that will disappear when the present physical phase is over and done with. The true Mystic is a human being, apart from sex, having risen above sex to the planes where sex is not.
False Mysticism dwells on the psychic planes only, revelling in the impure sensual images that there abound, drugged and poisoned by the emanations of passion and of sexual desires – far more mischievous than mere physical acts and frankly animal instincts. True Mysticism dwells on the mental and spiritual planes alone, leaving far below the impulses that belong to the bodily and Kamic natures of man. One dwells in the red light of Kama, the other in the pure white light of spirit: and whenever the student, in his searching after truth, comes across thoughts and images that bring sex into Mysticism, there let him feel sure that he is on the wrong road, that he is following a Will-o’-the-Wisp that will lead him into morass and death, instead of the star that shines overhead, his guide to the one true Life.
Chinese Spirits
187
Arithmetical Prophecy.
Figures are said to be incontestable; and, perhaps, that is one of the reasons why prophecy flies so much to arithmetic. Some of these calculations are well-known; and here is the latest of the kind. What is wanted is to determine the date when the Imperial rule shall end in France. Let us go back, then, to the reign of Louis Philippe for facts which may help us in the calculation. Louis Philippe ascended the throne in 1830. If we take that as a fixed point, we shall find that by adding to it certain numbers, the result will give the year 1848, when the reign of the Orleans family came to an end. Thus, Louis Philippe was born in 1773. The ciphers of this date added together make 18; and, if you add 18 to 1830, it brings us precisely to 1848. Again, his Queen was born in 1782. The ciphers of the date added together make 18; and 18 added to 1830 make 1848. Or, once again, the King and Queen were married in 1809. The ciphers of this year also make 18; and, if we treat this amount as before, it will yield the same result. Now let us proceed in the same fashion to deal with the Empire. It was proclaimed in 1852. The Emperor was born in 1808. If we add the ciphers of the latter date together, and add the result to the date of 1852, we obtain the figures 1869. Again, the Empress was born in 1826 Proceed as before, and the result is 1869. The Emperor and the Empress were married in 1853. Still repeat the calculation, and the result is 1869. Last of all, take the date of the Revolution – 1848. Manipulate its figures in the same fashion as the others – the sum total is 21; and this added to 1848 makes 1869. Is it not perfectly clear, therefore, that the Empire will come to an end in 1869?
[Well, the prophet was not much out, as the Empire came to an end in 1870!]
The Esoteric Christ
195
The Fatality of Numbers.
The number 14 has often been observed as having singularly influenced the life of Henry IV. and other French princes. Let us take the history of Henry. On the 14th May, 1029, the first king of France named Henry was consecrated, and on the 14th May, 1610, the last Henry was assassinated. Fourteen letters enter into the composition of the name of Henri de Bourbon, who was the 14th king bearing the titles of France and Navarre. The 14th of December, 1553, that is 14 centuries, 14 decades, and 14 years after the birth of Christ, Henry IV. was born; the ciphers of the date 1553, when added together, giving the number 14. The 14th May, 1554, Henry II. ordered the enlargement of the Rue de Ferronnerie. The circumstance of this order not having been carried out, occasioned the murder of Henry IV. in that street four times 14 years after. The 14th of May, 1552, was the date of the birth of Marguerite de Valois, first wife of Henry IV. On the 14th of May, 1588, the Parisians revolted against Henry III., at the instigation of the Duke of Guise. On the 14th of March, 1590, Henry IV. gained the battle of Ivry. On the 14th of May, 1590, Henry was repulsed from the Faubourgs of Paris. On the 14th of November, 1590, the Sixteen took oath to die rather than serve Henry. On the 14th of November, 1592, the Parliament registered the Papal Bull giving power to the Legate to nominate a king to the exclusion of Henry. On the 14th of December, 1599, the Duke of Savoy was reconciled to Henry IV. On the 14th of September, 1606, the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII., was baptized. On the 14th of May, 1610, the king was stopped in the Rue de Ferronnerie, by his carriage becoming locked with a cart, on account of the narrowness of the street. Ravaillac took advantage of the occasion for stabbing him. Henry IV. lived four times 14 years, 14 weeks, and four times 14 days; that is to say, 56 years and 5 months. On the 14th of May, 1643, died Louis XIII., son of Henry IV.; not only on the same day of the same month as his father, but the date, 1643, when its ciphers are added together, gives the number 14, just as the ciphers of the date of the birth of his father gave 14. Louis XIV. mounted the throne in 1643: 1,6,4,3 = 14. He died in the year 1715: 1,7,1,5 = 14. He lived 77 years, and 7 and 7 = 14. Louis XV. mounted the throne in the same year: he died in 1774, which also bears the stamp of 14, the extremes being 14, and the sum of the means 7 and 7 making 14. Louis XVI. had reigned 14 years when he convoked the States General, which was to bring about the Revolution. The number of years between the assassination of Henry IV. and the dethronement of Louis XVI. is divisible by 14. Louis XVII. died in 1794; the extreme digits of the dates are 14, and the first two give his number. The restoration of the Bourbons took place in 1814, also marked by the extremes being 14; also by the sum of the ciphers making 14.
The True Brotherhood of Man
Mediumism in Daily Life
Fragments from an Indian Note Book
213
Folk Lore in Medicine.
At once from different parts of the country the Lancet recommends the collection of the medical folk-lore of particular districts, before it is lost by the advance of general enlightenment. Many of the charms seem to rely on the vicarious suffering of some animal or the transference of the disease to some other person. Thus, in the case of warts, in one part of England the charm consists in impaling a slug or snail on a thorn and leaving it to decay, when the warts are supposed to disappear. Another practice was to anoint the warts with grease, then rub it off with paper, fold this up and throw it into the public road, and whoever picked it up would relieve the sufferer of his warts! This idea possibly to a dim and uninstructed mind might appear rational: but wearing a hare’s foot round the neck to prevent colic has no obvious explanation, and yet the custom is still prevalent in many parts of England. A few days ago we heard of a charm for the cure of jaundice, which was new to us and is perhaps worth recording. A poor woman in a parish of South Essex was attacked with jaundice, and, on hearing the nature of her complaint, she at once buried a new-laid egg in an ant-heap, for when the egg was destroyed she hoped the jaundice would disappear. Alas, this was not the case. The patient, however, did not lose faith in the charm, but blamed the medical attendant for not having told her the nature of her illness earlier: the illness must be as recent as the egg was new for the charm to be efficacious. The practice of wrapping patients in the reeking skins of freshly slaughtered animals was more obviously medical than due to any superstitious belief in its efficacy; but the reason why the Highland seer wrapped himself in a raw bull’s hide before he experienced his “second sight” is incomprehensible.
Karma and Reincarnation
222
Guesses at Truth
Madame Blavatsky tells us, “the Atom belongs wholly to the domain of metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction and has naught to do with physics, strictly speaking, as it can never be brought to the test of retort or balance.” (S. D. I., 513.)
But intangible as Atoms are, they are all-important to Theosophists, for “It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature of Matter and the infinite divisibility of the Atom that the whole science of Occultism is built. It opens limitless horizons to Substance, informed by the Divine Breath of its Soul in every State of tenuity.” (S. D. I., 520.)
Here Matter, instead of being regarded as eternal, is put aside as too evanescent for consideration, and Substance, “Its Conscious Cause” (S. D. I., 517) alone is regarded. From the soul of this “Conscious Cause” comes the Divine Breath which informs it, and that “Breath” seems to be a synonym of the vibration which constitutes an Atom and which is recognised by modern Science as omnipresent.
The modes of this vibration are infinite and distinct. They exist alike in the most rarefied and the most condensed substances. Thus we read: – “Atoms are called Vibrations in Occultism; also Sound, collectively.” The waves and undulations of Science are all produced by Atoms, propelling their Molecules from within. “Atoms fill the immensity of Space, and by their continuous vibrations are that Motion which keeps the wheels of life perpetually going. It is that inner work which produces the natural phenomena called the correlation of Forces. Only at the origin of every such Force there stands the conscious guiding Noumenon thereof.” (S. D. I., 633.)
Here, again, the “Old Wisdom” offers a friendly hint to “ Modern Science”. The recognition of “Conscious, guiding Noumena”, omnipresent and acting in unison, would save much valuable time and spare many a grievous disappointment. Nor do the objections to this theory seem to be of a very serious character. Whether we take the Mineral, Vegetable or Animal Kingdom, is there not always an initial “That” which defines its species, which intelligently discriminates, and 223 which unerringly selects such elements as are most suited to evolve the predetermined form? Does not this “That” synthesize the entire group of beings and impress its image upon every individual of that group, as surely as the image of a King is stamped upon every coin that issues from his royal Mint? Do we not instinctively recognise this image, regard the Aryan, the Semitic, the Mongolian, or Negroid Races as essentially One, and classify them all as Man? Is, then, this dominant “Unity” to be regarded as a blind Force that, quite accidentally, infallibly reproduces distinctive characteristics in millions of instances; or is it a generic Intelligence that ensouls the collective personality of the human Species and thereby distinguishes that species from all other groups of Beings?
Theosophists hold that there is a Special Intelligence which controls the evolution of each Kingdom, Species, Race and Family. That this Intelligence is, essentially and eternally, what the individuals of its group are relatively and temporarily. They teach too that, by the evolution of itself, through the evolution of its group, this Intelligence attains to a higher and holier Being in which its constituents equitably participate. Surely there is nothing irreverent or unreasonable in this!
As regards Atoms we are further told: “No Atom is ever created, for all Atoms are eternal, within the bosom of the One Atom – the Atom of Atoms – viewed, during Manvantara, as the material causative womb of the World.” Unmodified Matter, the first form of Prakriti (visible and invisible Nature) and Purusha (the divine Self, S. D. II., 574) are eternally One and are without adventitious attributes only during Pralaya (dissolution, S. D. I., 368) and when beyond any of the planes of conscious existence. “The Atom, as known to modern Science, is inseparable from Purusha, which is Spirit, but is now called Energy.” (S. D. I., 582.)
In another place we are told “Atoms are born at every new Manvantara”. (S. D. I., 545.)
Now unless we are to understand “born” as “reborn” or “become active” this seems a contradiction of the previous statement. But like the Romanists’ “Infallibility” without certainty, the Theosophist “Eternity” is only an euphuism; it does not mean “endless duration”. It is really a synonym of Manvantara, or “Day of Brahmâ”, and consequently Eternity is limited, by Esotericists, to four thousand three hundred and twenty millions of solar years. (S. D. 1., 655.) However, by taking Eternity in this sense, the statements agree.
The conception of the whole Cosmos as one Atom gives us a grand idea of the “Infinite” in which, alone, we can so regard it. To think of Spirit as the positive and Matter as the negative pole of the One Substance (K. to T., 168) brings many seeming discords into unison, and that both should be without “adventitious attributes” during the period of divine rest is perfectly consistent with reason, for an ultimate mode of Matter, apart from the Force which causes it to be, is simply unthinkable.
“The Atom may be described as a compact or crystallized point of divine energy and Ideation.” (Lucifer, Vol. viii., p. 116.) This conveys the idea of a focus of Force becoming manifest through its intensity – a vortex of which the effect is cognisable, though the dimensions of the effector cannot be defined. As described by those who can see the motion of the shoals of interstellar Atoms and follow them in their evolutions clairvoyantly, they are dazzling, like specks of virgin snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity is swifter than thought, quicker than any physical eye could follow, and the motion is circular. At times their motion produces flashes like those of the Northern lights. (S. D. I., 634.)
To those who believe in clairvoyance this is very interesting; but the facts depend so entirely on the word of the “Sensitive” that those who have not had a personal experience can only accept the statements 224 provisionally. It would be unwise therefore to build any argument upon them.
Further we are told every Atom is both life-giving and death-giving. It builds, by aggregation, Universes and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the transmigratory Soul, and as constantly changes and destroys those forms and expels the Souls from their temporary abodes. It is self-generating and self-destroying. It is that mysterious Life, represented by countless myriads of lives, that follows, in its own sporadic way, the hitherto incomprehensible law of Atavism; that copies family resemblances as well as those it finds impressed on the aura of the generators of every future human Being. (S. D. I., 261.)
Hitherto Atoms have been treated as manifestations of that Being in whose being all Beings exist. In the above they are shown as completing their portraiture by evolving creative and destructive powers on the physical plane. The divine Idea has been clothed in divine thought and that Thought has given birth to a new Idea – the “Sociality of Atoms”. Now, the simple, by combining, produce complex forms. But each Atom still retains its various grades of affinity and while a representative combination is evolved by a dominant Idea, the Form so produced is always liable to be dissolved by the greater affinity of its Atoms to some other formative Force, which comes within the sphere of their susceptibility: therefore Atoms are properly called both life-giving and death-giving.
From the moment of the first differentiation, Atoms and Monads, associated or dissociated, simple or complex, are but the principles, corporeal, psychic, and spiritual, of the gods – the gods being the radiations of primordial Nature. Consequently to the eye of the seer, the higher planetary Powers appear under two aspects – the Subjective as Influences and the Objective as mystic Forms, which under Karmic law, become a presence; Spirit and Matter being one. (S. D. I. 633).
Principles are: septenary differentiations into which all Beings are divided by Occultists. All beings, too, are said to manifest on seven different planes, consequently, as each Principle is also sevenfold and has its counterpart on every plane we have forty-nine aspects of the Seven Divine Principles to deal with. Gods are Manvantaric intelligent Forces. (S. D. I. 548.) They also are sevenfold. Their synthesis “God” is a Number endowed with motion; it is felt but not demonstrated. (S. D. I. 396.) It is number ten, Male-Female, the Creator of physical Humanity. (S. D. I. 347.) Nothing. (S. D. I. 252.) A circle of which the centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. (S. D. II. 545.) The great Law. (S. D. I. 147.)
We have, therefore, to regard Atoms as an essential Unity, and yet as being constituents of the Cosmic Forces, which are personified as Dhyan Chohans, etc. To increase the complication each personification has to be thought of as a sevenfold duality; male-female, positive-negative, good-evil, etc., being their common attributes. We may be pardoned, therefore, if we find Occult teaching a little perplexing.
Possibly the solution may be this: –
Atom is Divine Idea embodied in Divine Thought. Divine Thought differentiates the Septenate of Divine Idea. This Idea is still absolute Unity but with seven Aspects or manifested inherent Principles.
Each of these aspects is embodied in Primordial Thought, which differentiates the Septenate of every Aspect which ensouls it.
This process is constantly repeated; “ Idea”, on each lower plane, becomes more definite and Thought more dense, till at last both are materialized and physical senses are evolved to recognize them. The dual and septenary conditions are maintained throughout, and by them the essential Unity, in the Divine Idea, is ever unbroken. That which is reflects that which was and that which will be, each having its own potency 225 in the potentiality of all. Thus the Absolute is every possibility; the Finite those possibilities which have been manifested as divine Ideas or Atoms.
The collective aggregation of the Atoms, of the lower principles, forms the ‘World-Soul’ of our Solar System. Each of these Atoms is, of course, a Soul, a Monad, a little Universe endowed with consciousness and therefore with memory. (S. D., II. 672, note.) This appears to mean (a) That each Atomic differentiation is the vehicle of a Divine Spark or Soul and has a consciousness according to its capacity. (b) That the totality of Atomic consciousness is synthesized as the World-Soul and through that Synthesis each Atom acquires a sympathetic consciousness of the intelligence of all other Atoms so that under special conditions an incarnated Monad can acquire and express the collective knowledge of all Atoms.
As regards our “Hereafter” Occultism teaches, (a) That the life Atoms of our Prâna (Life Principle) are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the Atoms best impregnated with the Life Principle are partially transmitted from Father to Son by heredity, and are partly drawn once more together and become the animating principle of the new body in every new incarnation of the Monad. Because (b) as the individual Soul is ever the same, so are the Atoms of the Lower Principles, drawn as they are by Karmic Law always to the same Individuality in a series of various bodies. (S. D. II., 672.)
That the Life Atoms most identified with an Individuality should remain as its vehicle after death, seems likely enough, and that they should also transmit its personal characteristics could be believed even by a Materialist. It must however be remembered that these are “Prâna Atoms” not “Physical Atoms”, for with the latter such a cyclic unity could not be universal.
The Pall Mall Gazette, quoting the Times of India, says that at a recent meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Babu Saratchandra Das exhibited some very curious Tibetan relics, amongst them being carved ornaments of soap-stone, giving the Tibetan signs of the zodiac and a description of the origin of the world. Translating this, the exhibitor found that, in the beginning, what existed from eternity, in nothingness, was called the tortoise. The Buddhas of the past, present and future sprang out of him. The three worlds, and all the animal beings also, originated from the eternal tortoise. Time, without the distinction of past, present, and future, was in him, and the whole universe rested between his head and tail. From the vapour of his mouth rose the seven atmospheric strata which encompass the earth, and gradually the sphere of azure space, and thereafter “Swastika”, the emblem of the divine cross, was formed. From the saliva of this primeval tortoise sprang forth the oceans; and from his flesh were formed the lofty mountains, the islands, and the great continents, having trees for their hair. His head pointed to the south, his tail to the north, and his four limbs stretched towards the four corners of the world. His white back shaped the old father heaven, called “Khen”, wherein rested the celestial regions with the mansions of the gods, Mahadeva, Brahma, and angels of pure habits, who possessed the fourfold organs of sense. The celestial regions were formed above, and “Rirab”, the sublime mountain, stood below, holding the mansions of the thirty-three “Devas” and of the gods of the “Paranirmanarataya” on its top. On the flanks of “Rirab” resided the four guardian spirit-kings of the world, together with the sun and moon, the planets and stars. The sun and moon sprang from the eyes of the great tortoise. From the sound of his throat issued the dragon’s peal of thunder, and from his outstretched tongue flashed forth lightning which produced thunderbolts and hailstorms. From his breath originated the wind, the five internal essences, and the five physical elements; and when he shook his body there was earthquake.
226
Adyar
It would perhaps, be impossible, to find anywhere a greater contrast than that presented by our European and Indian Headquarters. The former – situated as it is in the midst of the largest and most densely populated city of the West – is surrounded on all sides by the tumultuous whirl of life of the great metropolis. The flow of the mighty tide of human existence reaches to the very doors, and the life within our European Headquarters beats in response to the larger life without.
Here in India all is different. Our surroundings breathe an air of absolute quiet and tranquillity. We are on every side environed by nature and by all the physical surroundings that tend to promote peace and quiet of mind. Yet there is here a like centre of activity; quieter, it is true, by reason of surroundings, but showing an equal earnestness and determination in the cause of Theosophy and on behalf of India’s spiritual welfare.
Adyar is situated about six miles from Madras, i.e., from the principal part of the town, Madras itself possessing about fourteen miles of sea front. The Headquarters’ buildings stand back from the road, and are approached by a carriage-drive through a grove of casuarina trees planted some years ago by the President-Founder. The drive leads up to the entrance, and here we get our first sight of the Society’s Hall. Imagine a large pillared hall like the atrium of the Romans of old, and some idea will be gathered of our principal building. To step from the blazing heat of the drive into the coolness of this pillared retreat is delightful. The whole of the front and one end of the hall open on the garden, the other end leads into the library. All round the hall are placed japanned shields bearing the names of the various Lodges of the Society and the dates of their formation. The President’s dais is in the front at the principal entrance. The hall, roughly speaking, takes the shape of a cross with one of the arms missing. The back of the hall leads into a small reception room, or drawing-room, the sides of which are hung with photographs of past conventions, addresses to the founders of the Society, &c. At the sides of the back part of the hall and the reception room are the ground floor bedrooms. Leading out of the reception room is the general office, where the Secretary and his staff work. The office has a balcony looking on to the river.
Now let us take a look upstairs. Over the hall itself there are no rooms, and we thus have a magnificent flat roof, which is a charming place for sitting together in the evenings. It is here that the celebrated “Chats on the Pial” published in The Theosophist took place. Opening on to the balcony are the President’s rooms, the upstairs library (Western section) and Bertram Keightley’s room. The library forms the left wing of the main building, and, as I said before, leads out of the hall. Over the entrance of the doorway is a fine carving of Saraswati, which has been presented to the library. The library itself is a large, lofty and beautifully cool room, with shelves all round containing the many valuable manuscripts that our Oriental library possesses. This is the Eastern section, the Western, as I have before stated, being upstairs. A magnificent chandelier, which I believe came from Japan, hangs from the ceiling. The library is perhaps the handsomest room at Headquarters. Adjoining the library, and separated from it by the beautiful carved screen of which the readers of Lucifer may have seen photographs, is a smaller room. Here, behind curtains, are hung the portraits of two of our Masters. In another part of the room hangs a small picture of Philippus Theophrastus, usually 227 known as Paracelsus, remarkable – in my eyes at all events – for the absolutely startling likeness it bears to the never-to-be-forgotten features of our beloved H.P.B. – the same expression and the same eyes.
Some fifteen yards from the main building, and on the left side of the drive, are the Theosophist and the President's offices. A little further on the right hand are the dining-room and some other buildings used as store-rooms, &c. About twenty yards from the main building on the other side are two detached bungalows, one of which I myself inhabit. These look on to the river. In another part of the grounds are some small houses where members of the staff reside. The extent of our domain here is about thirty-five or forty acres. The buildings are of terra-cotta colour, very pleasing to the eye, and have recently been improved by the addition of ornamental tile work.
In the grounds are a large selection of trees and shrubs of various descriptions, including three or four fine specimens of the mystic Neem-tree. This tree is much esteemed in the East on account of its medicinal and magnetic properties. One very fine tree in an angle at the back of the library hangs over on to the roof and forms a pleasant shade from the moonbeams at night.
And now I think I have given enough detail with regard to the buildings. Accounts of this nature, if prolonged, are apt to be wearisome.
It would be hard, I imagine, to find anywhere more beautiful sunsets than those we watch here every evening. Standing on the verandah of my bungalow, I can look up the river and watch the sun slowly setting behind the foreground of the bridge. The colours are exquisite, and it would need a far abler pen than mine to describe the beauty of the scene. Then follows the lovely moonlight night, which those who have lived in India know so well. One may stand on the roof and look down on to the garden with its beautiful contrasts of light and shade, watching the trees mysteriously waving in the night breeze, or walk by the river side watching the moonbeams play on the water. The latter is perhaps more beautiful and tranquillizing. The shaded parts of the water are illuminated by the phosphorescent flashes of the numerous fish that dart hither and thither. A deep silence reigns, broken only by the occasional chirp of a cricket or the drowsy note of a half-awakened bird, while the booming of the surf on the beach half a mile away sounds faintly in the ear.
The heat of the Indian day is amply compensated for by the beauty of the night and the early morning. The former has an especial and mysterious charm, an indescribable something which lifts one for the time being away from the cares and troubles of material existence.
And what is the wish that arises in one’s heart in thinking of these beautiful surroundings? The desire to make our Headquarters the centre of a still greater power for good in India, the focus from which shall radiate far and wide the teachings and lessons of Theosophy.
Theosophical work in India seems now to be at the verge of a new cycle of activity. Our brothers here are looking forward with keen anticipation to Annie Besant’s visit, and there is every promise of a successful tour. The Bombay branch shows great activity. Bro. Peacocke's work in this direction is admirable. Already in the dim horizon begin to appear hopes of a Headquarters at Bombay, a thing which is much needed in that promising centre.
Bertram Keightley has left here for a tour in the Punjab and N.W.P. His tour has been long promised, and should prove of very great service.
I hope, if time allows, to send each month to Lucifer some account of our doings and activities here, but the fear of trespassing too much on its valuable space compels me to bring the present to a close.
The Seven Principles of Man
241
An Outline of the “Secret Doctrine”
We have seen how Universal Night is brought about by the gradual, rhythmical coalescence into unity of all the opposing elements that make up objective existence.
It is impossible by any figure, picture, or simile, to convey any conception of the condition of the Universe when thus withdrawn into latency, because every conception implies division into the conceiver and the thing conceived, while it is by the elimination of this very division, and by the absorption of the thing conceived into the conceiver, of the object into the subject, that Universal Night is produced.
But, though we must regard the condition of Universal Night as essentially inconceivable by the intellect, still there are various considerations which, if intuitionally grasped, may throw some light upon the question of its nature.
If we compare the gradual, rhythmical passage of the Universe into full objectivity to the forward swing of a pendulum from the perpendicular line of rest, and the gradual rhythmical passage to re-absorption in latency, to the backward swing of the pendulum to the perpendicular, then it will be evident that, as the pendulum, if unimpeded, will swing backward an exactly equal distance behind the perpendicular; so, when the sum total of the potencies of the objective universe has reached the condition of latency at the end of each Universal Day, it is certain that there must be in these potencies a tendency to a further activity which will be, in every detail, the reverse or negative of the former activity.
This is why the “Secret Doctrine”, and the stanzas on which it is based, have defined Universal Night by a series of negative statements (“Time was not; Universal Mind was not;” etc.) by which we are to understand, not that the existent universe had dwindled down into mere non-entity, but that a form of activity had set in which was in every detail the reverse and negative of the activity of the existent universe, and hence inconceivable by us, or conceivable only as non-activity or naught.
We can arrive at the same result by the exactly opposite process of expressing in universal terms all forms of activity which we know of as 242 limited and particular; thus, in Universal Night, universal perception is, because the perceiver has been universally blended with the object of perception; universal life is, because all the limits of particular life have vanished; universal consciousness is, because objectivity has been universally absorbed into consciousness; and universal bliss is, because all the barriers to bliss have disappeared.
Perhaps the best illustration of the form of activity we are considering, is the mathematical process by which a gradually diminishing series of numbers is carried down to zero (corresponding to the perpendicular line of the pendulum), and then beyond zero into a gradually increasing series of negative numbers, which mathematicians regard as equally important and equally capable of manipulation with the positive numbers.
If zero be the threshold of Universal Night, then the gradually increasing series of negative numbers may represent the negative activities which we have postulated as existent therein.
This is merely the metaphysical aspect of this mysterious question; it has also a moral and a spiritual side, but these cannot be expressed in words; a comprehension of them can only be reached by the actual practice of morality and spirituality; or, to speak more truly, we can only prepare ourselves for that true spiritual comprehension of, and moral participation in, this mystery, which will be ushered in at the end of this universal day, by gradually attaining absolute morality and spirituality, during the gradual and rhythmic activities of this universal day.
To return to the illustration of the pendulum; when it has reached the farthest point of its backward journey beyond the perpendicular, it inevitably tends to swing forward again to the perpendicular, and, if free, will swing forward; and in virtue of the momentum thus acquired, it will not halt at the perpendicular point but will swing forward again to the foremost point previously reached. And if the pendulum be entirely unimpeded, this backward and forward swing will repeat itself indefinitely; and, further, the duration and extent of the pendulum’s journey behind the perpendicular will be exactly equal to the duration and extent of its journey in front of the perpendicular.
In the same way, the extension of the universe into objective existence and its re-absorption into latency, will tend to repeat themselves indefinitely; day and night of the universe will be succeeded by day and night, in endless succession; and each universal day and universal night will be of exactly the same duration; or, rather, would be of exactly the same duration if there were any common, continuous standard of duration to apply to both.
At first sight, it would appear that this expansion and re-absorption of the universe, in the endless series of universal days and nights, is a mere fruitless activity leading no-whither; just as, from an astronomical standpoint, the days and nights of the planets and our earth might seem a mere senseless repetition, aimless, objectless, endless; yet we know that this is merely 243 apparent; that each day is fraught with momentous issues, that each day is richer than its predecessors, if only by the mere fact that it had predecessors; that each day is the heir of the ages.
And so it must be with the universal days. Each must have some peculiar worth of its own; must garner some harvest of hitherto inexperienced power or wisdom; must add something, if not to the total quantity of being in the universe – for what can be added to the All? – then to the quality of that being, and to the quality of the life of the units that make it up.
As the sculptor’s statue is first hewn out from head to foot, and then smoothed and polished from head to foot; so, perhaps, the humanity which is only rough-hewn in one universal day, requires a second universal day to polish and smooth it to perfection. Perhaps when we have fully learned perfection of individual life in the present universal day, we may find that this is only the preparation for a higher life in complex grouped personalities in some future day of the universe, and so on, ever to higher and purer perfections.
But into these secrets it is fruitless to pry; it is only profitable to note that the forces and tendencies which gave birth to previous universal days, tended, at the period we are considering – the waning of the universal night which preceded our present objective universe – to give birth to a new universal day, richer than its predecessors, and destined to garner a richer harvest than its predecessors had yet known.
We shall see that this harvest is prepared for, by a grouping of the units of life into hosts and hierarchies, ruling over systems of suns and worlds; and, in the case of our own system, seeking a sevenfold perfection by a rhythmical, sevenfold progress through phases of life that, for want of a better name, have been called existence in the mineral, vegetable, animal, human, and superhuman kingdoms. We shall better be able to grasp the reasonableness of this rhythmical progress, if – remembering that objective life is the disciplinary expression of the eternal spiritual will, the twin-brother of consciousness – we conceive these phases of life as picture-lessons, in which the unit of life has to seem a stone in order to learn something of the endurance of which a stone is merely the symbol; to seem a plant, in order to learn the grace and sweetness of a plant; to seem an animal to learn the active energy of an animal; and so through manhood to the demi-god and the divine; ever keeping in mind that that which seems to become these is the eternal spiritual unit, and that it thus seems, through the harmonious action of its twin powers, Will and Consciousness; and ever remembering that this unit is a part of the All; is, indeed, in one sense, identical with the All.
And thus we return to the conception of Universal Night, brooding in latency, awaiting the Dawn.
C. J.
244
Heat, Sound and Consciousness
Before entering on the comparison of Heat with Sound, let us define the material action by which the sensation of both is produced in us.
Sound is the result of vibration set up in the surrounding medium by a material body. Heat is the result of motion in the particles of a body. So that there is a fundamental difference of origin between the vibration we perceive as sound and that we perceive as heat; one being due to the agitation of bodies, the other to movements amongst the particles composing a body. Now what we want to know is why the vibration of a body is heard in musical notes and the vibration of its atoms is felt as heat, when in both cases it is only a vibration or quantity of energy which we hear and feel. In both sensations, that which hears and feels is Consciousness; so that to solve the problem we must find the relation which exists between it and a vibration set up by a body and by an atom. We have seen that Consciousness aroused becomes the Will to Be, and Will is in its objective form heat or energy at work, the equivalent, on the physical plane, of an effort of Will to manifest itself. Let us consider the earth as it gradually emerges into space out of its state of fiery nebulosity. We have first of all a centre of Consciousness which becomes active as the Will to Be. This, in its objective form, is Heat, or energy at work, the equivalent on the physical plane of an effort of Will to manifest itself. The process of formation is the self-conversion of Energy into Form with a corresponding disappearance of heat; in other words, the earth cools and consolidates. Energy, as formulated matter, takes up a new relation to its subjective Self or Consciousness; for it possesses a capacity to vibrate as unit systems of forces where each represents a particle of matter or a material body. Thus a vibration, which at first could only represent the activity of formless Consciousness, may now represent also the activity of concrete forms of Consciousnesss, and what we have to do is to see how this dual relation in a vibration becomes objective to Consciousness and what is their effect on it. The method by which this is found is to observe the effect they produce on the Consciousness of man. The vibration of bodies produces Sound, that of atoms vibrating in the same medium develops Heat. Now, let us examine into the meaning of the audibility of vibration.
Science finds that the pitch of a musical note depends solely on the number of vibrations concerned in its production (Tyndall) and that the number of these must be at least sixteen per second if the note is to become audible 245 (Helmholtz). Therefore before our Consciousness can judge of the quality of sounds, before in fact the sense of hearing is awakened so that it may apprehend the clang-tint of a note, the tympanum of the ear must be struck by about sixteen periodic vibrations which, mechanically speaking, means that that particular vibration must acquire a certain volume before its quality can be sensed. Volume therefore is the natural relation which the energy of Sound bears to Consciousness. We may assume that if our Consciousness reproduces exactly the perceived object, a quantity of psychic activity has been aroused equal to that of the excitor. But because it has no material volume we must assume that the periodic beats which awaken sufficient perception to enable us to perceive audibly are actively employed in converting the volume of the form of the emittor or its materiality, into an immaterial equivalent. Figuratively speaking, the idea of limitations is being conveyed from the body in vibration to the psychic plane. Now, as the evolution of the material world is also the evolution of Consciousness, it follows that the pitch of audibility which we find indicated in the sixteen periodic vibrations represents the ratio of the evolution of matter or its pitch of condensation to that of Consciousness (macrocosmic or microcosmic). From this and other considerations it may be inferred that this pitch of audibility is inversely proportionate to the square root of the pitch of condensation reached at any period of time by the earth in its progress from an original state of pure energy to its present conditions of consolidation, so that the power to hear will gradually change with the evolution of matter. From what has been said I define Hearing as Consciousness whose activity takes the form of an effort to translate materialised energy back into its immaterial essence. Thus far we have got at the first step in fathoming the relation of a vibration of Sound to its subjective self or Consciousness. Now we must follow on and find the meaning of the Consciousness of quality which the vibration rouses as soon as it is heard. The quality of a note is due to the composition of the material emitting it, and is therefore the manifestation of that which lies within the limits of its material form, so that hearing is the entrance of the human Consciousness into the inner being of matter, that which in fact is the concrete form of the macrocosmic Consciousness; in a word, we are sensible of the formative power sustaining the manifestation of matter as a visible thing.
Now let us turn to the heat vibration, and by comparing it to the audible vibration find whence it arises that it should be felt and not heard. As volume qualifies Sound, so quantity qualifies Heat; and the difference we observe between each vibration lies in this: the first has to be converted into a psychic equivalent before Consciousness can grasp its meaning; the second is felt immediately and without the interposition of an intermediate act of transformation and translation on to the psychic plane. Therefore Consciousness senses it as non-voluminous in its origin, because we have seen that when energy is emitted by a body having volume, it is conscious 246 of it only after having realised the condition of condensation characterising its origin. But the heat vibration proceeds from that which composes matter or its atoms, and in fact is the vibration of the Substance of matter. Therefore we must conclude that while matter is voluminous, the Substance of matter is non-voluminous. Thus the answer to our first question, why energy is audible in some cases and felt as heat in others, is given, and we find that audibility is the result of the relation which Consciousness bears to its objective self (energy) when in a state of formation, and music is the conscious expression of constructive power; on the other hand, Heat is the conscious perception of energy in its state of active will power, and what we then feel is Substance, or that which has built up matter.
The relationship of audible energy and that of felt energy to a common Consciousness explains the relation existing between Substance and Matter, and in order to complete our investigation of the meaning of Heat, and to explain still further the connection between Consciousness, Will, Energy, Substance, and Matter, I will enter into a detailed comparison between them, guided by what has already been observed of the characteristics of energy when coming from a body and when coming from the substance of a body, and co-related to the subjective power of perception.
Matter is characterised by Consciousness as being voluminous, Substance as being non-voluminous; the former returns to its original state of energy as Sound, the latter as Heat. Now it is evident that the first and most distinguishing characteristic of Substance is that as soon as it is in motion we feel it as Heat; that is to say, when leaving its state of rest and becoming positively active, Consciousness, in its primitive unity of Feeling, becomes equally active. Change of temperature is in itself simply degrees of abstract feeling; and because we feel Substance it must be a something, and therefore we are driven to the conclusion that Substance is non-voluminous only with reference to matter because of its intense tenuity.
Let us trace the progress of Heat to our Consciousness of it. A centre of heat consists of the particles of a body in motion. The vibrations of warmth which we feel it emitting are the forms of its energy, but until our Consciousness is roused we have no right to say that they are hot. The conscious activity which results in the perception “Heat”, is that mental reflection by which Consciousness perceives itself as Heat. On the physical plane this becomes physical heat, and as we can trace no defined action by which mechanical energy is translated to the psychic plane as heat felt, but on the contrary there is an instantaneous and equivalent perception of the vibration of Substance, we must conclude that there is, as regards physical life, continuity between Substance and Consciousness in its character of perceiver of Heat. This proves that Conscious Power is a substantial development, and that, by an extension of reasoning, ideas are also substantial. Now since when we feel, we feel the atoms of substance 247 which have built up matter, we are at the same time entering consciously into the inner being which lies within the limits of visible form, we are in fact entering on common ground where Substance and Matter meet as Energy endued with their respective characteristics. In examining the meaning of audible energy, we found that when once the limitation of matter had been passed and sound become perceptible, we then entered into the quality of sound, or the essence and nature of the material form, taking this nature from its constructive side as a product of conscious formation. We in fact feel as music the energy which built it, we sense the substance of form, plus the peculiar character belonging to it as a result of formation, and therefore we are also conscious of all those passionate feelings (grades of hot and cold) which music awakens. Here Substance as that which is felt, and Substance as the material of matter, are united in one common ground of conscious perception.
Now we know that it is only as energy that we perceive either or both; we know that there is continuity between Substance and Consciousness, and we find that these two statements of fact require also that there continuity between Energy, Substance and Consciousness. If we really do perceive Heat and Sound, it is absolutely impossible to avoid the conclusion, deducing it as the logical outcome of natural facts, that Substance and Energy are one. When we feel, we are conscious of the presence of Substance; and this latter is not only that of which we are conscious, but is the thing which is conscious, thus practically demonstrating its metaphysical parentage as the activity and reflection of the Will of Consciousness. I have in Part I. tried to show the connection between Will, Energy and Consciousness, so that now we have an unbroken chain of continuity stretching between and connecting together Matter, Substance, Energy, Will and Consciousness.
Tropical plants are not wholly desirable things. We mentioned the other day an American tree, and now we have the kali mujah, or death plant, of Java, with flowers which continually give off a perfume so powerful as to overcome, if inhaled for any length of time, a full-grown man, and which kill all forms of insect life that come under their influence.
“We do not yet know that in the soul’s search for truth the bitterness lies here, the striving cannot always hide itself among the thoughts; sooner or later it will clothe itself in outward action; then it steps in and divides between the soul and what it loves. All things on earth have their price: and for truth we pay the dearest. We barter it for love and sympathy. The road to honour is paved with thorns; but on the path to truth at every step you set your foot down on your own heart.”
Correspondence
The Church of Christ
The True Church of Christ
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Reviews
The Dinkard
Through the kindness of the Trustees of the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Translation Fund, the Theosophical Library has just received a copy of The Dinkard, Vol. VI.
The existence of this fund is a proof, if proof were wanted, of the admirable spirit which has always prompted the wealthier members of the Parse-community to sacrifice a portion of their riches to the temporal and spiritual well-being of their community; and the present volume, which contains the original Pahlavi text, the same transliterated in Zend characters, and translated into English and Gujarati, bears witness at once to the learning of the editors, and to their wish that the fruits of their erudition should be of use to European as well as Indian Scholars. This liberal spirit has always characterised the Parsees ever since Anquetil Duperon was initiated into the mysteries of the Zend Avesta, but it has undoubtedly received a powerful stimulus from the method of comparative religion introduced to India by the Theosophical Society.
The English translation is excellent, though occasionally rather stiff and over-loaded with Pahlavi words, but we do not regret this, as it gives us an additional guarantee that the original has been closely adhered to. Very interesting to Theosophists will be the discussion of the principles of man, which, according to the Dinkard (218, 3, etc., p. 353) are as follows: –
“The soul, [and] the vital spirit, [and] the fravâhar, and the intellect. The rôbân is the soul, which is the ruler over the body. Just as the head of a family conducts the household, and the rider the horse, so does the soul conduct the body. . . . The vital spirit is the breath of life, which is paramount owing to the fravâhar. Just as a paterfamilias preserves the health (of his family) by means of food, and the rider keeps the horse working, so does this quickening (fravâhar) keep through energy the (living) body active. So when this (quickening power) is separated from the body, the body dies, just as when the (main) pillar of a house breaks down, and the house instantly falls. . . . Again, as the sun is the light of the world, and a lamp is (the light) of a house, so does the intellect animate with watchful light the lord of the house (i.e., the soul) in the house (viz., the body).”
Again (282, 2, p. 420): –
“Be it known that, the soul during its connection with its congenial instrument, this corporeal frame, has a desire and a capability for acquiring sacred knowledge”.
In conclusion, the print of this volume is excellent, and its technical get-up leaves little to be desired; though we should be glad of a fuller index or glossary.
C. J.
Raphael’s Almanack
It was an agreeable surprise for us on glancing through the 1892 edition to find that there were nearly two pages devoted to our cause. In some homely phrases on “Why do we have troubles in this life,” a broad statement of the law of Karma is made, and the reader is referred for fuller information to the Theosophical Headquarters. Raphael seems to have got scent of “the close of the cycle”, for the Almanack is embellished with an unusually ominous-looking hieroglyphical 251 picture which portrays the chief events likely to happen during the year 1892; and if the facts come up to the picture then it will be a disastrous year indeed. W. Foulsham and Co., 4, Pilgrim Street, Ludgate Hill, Publishers.
S.
Plagiats Bibliques[7]
Under the sub-title “Brahmanisme de Moïse: Bouddhisme de Jésus”, Baron Harden Hickey, whose La Théosophie we had the pleasure of noticing in one of our former issues, sets himself the task of demonstrating the Eastern origin of both the Old and New Testament teachings. Prefacing his parallelism of myths with a short but severe criticism of the absurdities and crudities of the Mosaic narrative, the author proceeds to the task of citing chapter and verse to support his charge of plagiarism. The history of the creation and of Adam and Eve is a copy from the Vedic myth of the creation of Adima and Héva on the island of Ceylon. The story of Noah and the deluge is identical with the myth of Vaivasvata Manu. Abraham's sacrifice is paralleled with that of Ajigartta. The argument of plagiarism is built up on the similarity of four names, and the identity of the offices of their possessors, viz., Manu the Indian, Manes the Egyptian, Minos the Grecian, and Moses the Jewish law-giver. “Ces quatre noms”, writes Saint Patrice, “dominent le mond ancien tout entier; ils apparaissent au berceau de quatre peuples différents, venant jouer le même rôle, entourés de la même auréole mysterieuse, tous quatre législateurs et grands prêtres, tous quatre fondant des sociétés nouvelles et théocratiques”. Hence it is evident, the writer argues, that they proceeded one from the other, and that Manu, the most ancient in date, must have been the precursor of the others. Even supposing the deduction to be correct, the citing of three parallels is surely insufficient to prove the theory! Moreover we require further evidence before Jacolliot can be taken au grand sérieux.
Theosophists contend that all the great world religions have a common basis esoterically, and it must also be conceded that exoterically they can be proved in many cases to have preserved identical allegories and myths. This, however, does not justify the somewhat too positive position assumed by the author of Plagiats Bibliques, for though we know that Greece borrowed much from Egypt, we are in no position to state that Egypt copied from India. This, however, is not the direct question raised by Saint Patrice, who confines his enquiry to Judaism and Hinduism. But even here we are not justified in being too precise, for what do we know about the origin of the worship of the “jealous God”, except that it was a magical cult that rejoiced in the smoke of the blood of wholesale animal sacrifice, and of human butchery, as witness the annihilation of the Amalekites and other nations that had enraged the wrathful tribal deity of Israel? This much alone we know of its origin; and can clearly distinguish in the present tree of Judaism this original savage stock on which were subsequently grafted the more cultivated branches of Egyptian and Babylonian wisdom during the two greatest captivities of the nation.
History proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that these two captivities completely transformed the original tribal worship, and it is far from improbable that together with the “spoiling” of the Babylonian sacred records, the plagiarism of several of the Hindoo myths of the creation and deluge, and other sacred allegories, was indulged in by the compilers of 252 the new canon on their return from the captivity. In this, however, we have one thing to be thankful for, viz., that the Jews have thus preserved for us the tradition of the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, though even in so weak and faint an echo as the modern Kabala. The author of the volume under review, however, entirely disregards the mystical side of religion, and so confines his argument to the somewhat hackneyed ground of dead-letter criticism.
The second part of the book is devoted to tracing parallels between the New Testament mythology and that of Buddhism, and the historical link is sought for in the communities of Essenes round the Dead Sea and beyond Jordan, which are thought by some writers to have been societies of Buddhist monks, or at any rate Jewish or Syrian copies of the Sangha. There is no doubt that the reformation of Gautama must have had a far-reaching influence throughout the whole of Asia, but it does not seem wise to us to try and insist too much on direct and conscious proselytising on the one hand, and deliberate and unacknowledged plagiarism on the other. It is true that a great mental and moral current, a regular whirl-wind of spiritual life was set in motion by the teacher of Kapilavastu, and that we find it permeating men’s minds with irresistible force in the following centuries, for the key-note of freedom from the bonds of matter had been struck, and the vibrations swelled into the waves of an ocean that overflowed the Eastern world far and wide. Thus we find from 300 years before the Christian era, Asia Minor, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and even North Africa were filled with communities of ascetics, who followed a strict course of monastic life on almost identical lines with the precepts and rules laid down in the gospel narratives, in hope of attaining the “kingdom of heaven”. In the main the ideals and mode of life prevalent among such communities were identical; each of them had its own peculiar initiatory rites and mysteries. One thing alone is certain in all this uncertainty, viz., that with the untrustworthy data before us it is unwise to dogmatise.
Theosophical Activities
The General Secretary of the Indian Section left Headquarters on Sunday, September 27th, for Calcutta, on a tour round the Branches of Bengal, the Punjaub, Bombay, and the North-West Provinces. The tour has been a long promised one, and it is hoped that it will be of special use just now. Some of the Northern Branches which have been doing good work have had no visit to encourage them for some years past, while to those that have been less active the General Secretary's visit will serve as a stimulus.
Bro. S. V. Edge, who has recently joined the Adyar staff, has charge of the Headquarters during the Secretary's absence.
A member of the Tipperah Branch has undertaken a translation of the Ashtavakra Samhita.
Lieut. Peacocke, one of the active Vice-Presidents of the Blavatsky Lodge, T.S., of Bombay, has spent his leave in visiting some of the Branches, especially those at Kumbakonam and Mannargudi, and in working at Headquarters during the absence of the General Secretary.
Babu Ganga Nath Jha, B.A., a member of the Kasi Tattva Sabha, Benares, is translating some important Sanskrit works into English for the 253 Theosophist; Pandit Kali Beesant Strotuya has also promised some translations. The Bombay Branch, which is adopting all the methods of Western Branches, has a long list of activities. N. F. Bilimoria, the correspondent to the Theosophist, reports:
“An Anglo-Gujerati monthly, called Gûl-Afghân, has been converted into a Theosophic organ to convey Theosophic thoughts among native families, especially the Parsis, who appear to have been taking more interest in Theosophy than any other class of people in Bombay. The Gûl-Afghân (the diffuser of flowers) advocates Theosophy, temperance, vegetarianism, and all other humanitarian movements. With Pauses, our new offspring, I hope we shall be able to establish our position, as we have now our own organs: but it all depends on our own efforts, individual as well as collective, to carry Theosophy on towards its goal.
“Various tracts have been published and distributed gratis, by individual members as well as by the Lodge; among these I may mention the following: –
“‘Why I became a Theosophist’, by Annie Besant; ‘Object of the Theosophical Society’, by Bertram Keightley, M.A.; ‘Aims and Objects of Theosophy’, compiled from ‘Key to Theosophy’ by M. M. Shroff; ‘Karma as a cure for trouble’; ‘Necessity for Reincarnation’; ‘The Great Mare's Nest of the Psychical Research Society’, by Annie Besant; ‘Universal Brotherhood’, by Dr. A. Keightley; ‘An Epitome of Theosophy’, by W. Q. Judge; ‘Do the Parsis worship Fire?’, by N. F. Bilimoria; ‘Zoroastrianism in the light of Occult Philosophy’; ‘Testimony of eminent Medical men on Vegetarianism’; ‘The Drink-crave, how to cure”, by J. C. Jackson, M.D., &c., &c.”
The Adyar Library is in want of Gould's Mythical Monsters and Skinner's Source of Measures. The Librarian will humbly salute the feet of him or her who sends copies of these valuable works to join the rest of the prisoners in his custody.
15th Oct., 1891.
It is far more difficult to write an Indian letter to Lucifer than a London letter to the Theosophist. We have none of the local activity here, none of the crowded meetings, lectures and classes that form an important part of the London Theosophical life.
Bertram Keightley, at the time I write, is in Calcutta, where he is doing his best to arouse the members of that Branch into greater activity. He writes that an active English Theosophist is badly needed there, one who could give all his time to the work, who could stand the climate, and one blessed with an unlimited amount of patience and perseverance. In Bombay, where excellent work is being done, the same want is felt. A thoroughly organised Headquarters would be of invaluable service there, but where are the funds to come from? It is believed that if a certain amount could be guaranteed the government would be disposed to make a free grant of the land, it having large tracts of waste land at its disposal.
Our brother Rai B. K. Laheri, whom so many of you had the pleasure of meeting and of hearing at the Blavatsky Lodge meetings, has been doing excellent work at Lûdhiana, where he resides; he has now a branch there which promises well.
The Indian Press is endeavouring to vie with the London newspapers in giving full attention to Theosophy. A very large proportion of the papers are decidedly favourably disposed, e.g., The Hindu and The Madras Mail, both local papers. The editors of several leading papers, e.g., Indian
254
Mirror, are Theosophists, and we thus get many a friendly pat on the back and word of encouragement. I should like to mention here a small paper, The Sanmarga Bodhini, the organ of the Aryan Samaj, published at Bellary by our Bro. R. Jagannathiah. Part of the paper is in English, and part in the vernacular Telugu. The paper may be said to be really a Theosophical organ; it gives a great deal of space to us and is doing excellent work.
We are arranging now for the translation of some of our pamphlets and books into the vernaculars. Tamil and Telugu are to be taken first. One brother is already translating the Key to Theosophy.
Sunday last was sacred to Saraswati (the Goddess of Learning), and our Brahmin brethren performed the due rites and ceremonies in the Library.
The Monsoon has now set in, and there has already been a considerable amount of rain in the South. All fear of famine is practically over.
Sangamitta Girls’ School. – The subscriptions sent out for the support of the girls’ school have been received with great joy and thankfulness by the Women’s Education Society of Ceylon. Brothers Bertram Keightley and Sydney Edge visited the school on their journey out to Madras, and were much pleased with all they saw.
The average attendance of children, writes Mr. Peter de Abrew by the last mail, is between 70 and 80, and the expected arrival of Mrs. Higgins from the United States and Mrs. Pickett from Melbourne has already increased the interest of Sinhalese ladies in the school and the educational movement generally. Mr. de Abrew is now very anxious to arouse further attention, and also to aid the funds by holding a fancy bazaar in the month of January next, and he asks me to enlist, if possible, some workers for this good cause. My duties and responsibilities already fill all my time, but there are doubtless many who like this kind of work, and who would gladly give their services. If some lady with leisure and a not quite empty purse would take the matter in hand, and try to get a small case ready by Christmas time, there will be good opportunities this next month, with the shops full of articles pretty and suitable, and not too dear, and it will be an immense help to all of us. Will anyone inclined so to act communicate with me on the subject, and I will give what help I can in the way of advice.
E. Kislingbury, F.T.S.
Treasurer to Sangamitta School Fund.
The work of spreading education through the length and breath of the island by means of the Theosophical Society is ever increasing. During the early part of August one new school for boys was opened at a suburb of Colombo, under the supervision of the High Priest Sumangala. Down at Galle measures are being taken to open a High School, while further down South a very flourishing school celebrated its first anniversary a few days ago.
The H.P.B. Press. The “H.P.B.” Press has proved such a success that a few determined Theosophists see no reason why we should not do all our own printing, instead of only an insignificant part of it. Large sums are annually paid out for printing, and common sense suggests that a great economy could be achieved by keeping the money as much as possible in the Society. The amount of work to be done is very considerable. The first two volumes of the Secret Doctrine are practically out of print, and a 255 new and revised edition has to be at once put in hand. The third volume has also to be brought out. A new edition of the Key will soon have to be published. The Theosophical Publishing Society has also three or four new books to bring out. In addition there are large quantities of notices, bills, posters, syllabuses, &c., &c., to be turned out. The whole printing of the Lodges also could be undertaken.
It is not proposed in any way to start an amateur printing office. The promoters of the undertaking rely on the long experience of Bro. James M. Pryse, who has started several successful printing offices, and is in every way capable of supervising the whole undertaking. The scheme is a thoroughly sound one. Suitable premises have been taken close to the Headquarters, one of the best American cylinder presses and a large Otto gas engine are ordered, and the fonts of types are being cast. The type will be from American moulds, but cast in this country. It is hoped that the office will be running in a fortnight. The managers of the undertaking are the Countess Wachtmeister, Annie Besant, G. R. S. Mead and E. T. Sturdy.
The Section Library. It was one of the wishes of H. P. B. that the library at Headquarters should grow into one of the best libraries on Occult and Theosophical subjects in Europe. We are far from such a consummation at present. The nucleus of a library taken over by the British Section from the London Lodge, and from the British by the European Section, has been increased by the books left by H. P. B., it is true, but these books are, except in a few instances, in themselves of no value. They are valuable to us because they are her books; but for the most part they consist of volumes sent for review to Lucifer. Books are no good unless they are used, and there must be a number of members of the Society who have books on Theosophy and Occultism and general works bearing indirectly on these subjects that they never use, and are never likely to use. Such books will be of more value on the shelves of our Library and will often save the time spent by members in journeying to the British Museum or other Libraries, and also be the means of supplying readier answers to questions which rain in on all sides.
Fellows of the T.S., please overhaul your books; the Library will pay carriage if necessary.
Walter R. Old, Librarian.
The Blavatsky Lodge. To relieve the overcrowding on Thursday evenings, a meeting for members only has been arranged, to be held on Saturday evenings, from 8.30 to 10 p.m. An elaborate syllabus of study has been drawn up, the subject being “The Seven Planes of the Universe and Their Relation to Man”. Members can obtain copies of this syllabus from the Secretary. The Thursday lectures still continue, and are open to associates and visitors. The Secret Doctrine Class has ceased to hold its meetings on Thursdays, as the new members’ meetings on Saturdays sufficiently cover the ground for all practical purposes. The Key to Theosophy Class still meets on Mondays at 8.30, and is open to members and associates.
The Thursday evening lectures are always attended by full audiences, and sometimes overflow meetings have to be arranged. For instance, on October 29th, when Annie Besant lectured on “Priesthoods: True and False”, two overflow meetings were held, one in the library by G. R. S. Mead, and the other in the drawing room by W. R. Old, both places being filled past standing room, and many would-be hearers having to go away. The monthly conversazione was a crowded gathering, and proves the wisdom of an institution that might be copied by other Lodges with advantage.
Brighton Lodge. – Mr. Ed. Ellis, M.A., has resigned the Presidentship of this Lodge, and Mrs. Herbert Crossley has been invited, and has accepted the invitation, to become the President. The Lodge is still a 256 small one, having lost several valuable members through removal from Brighton, but others have come in to fill their places, and there are many signs of increased interest and activity. Mr. W. Kingsland has done good service to the Lodge by lecturing twice last month, taking each time as the subject of discourse the Seven Principles of Man. Several enquirers attended these lectures, and subsequently joined the Lodge as associates.
Chiswick Lodge. – Mrs. Besant’s lecture at Chiswick, on the 2nd October, has brought many new enquirers, and some new members, to this Lodge. The plan has been adopted of taking the “Wilkesbarre Letters” as the basis for discussion at the fortnightly open meetings, one chapter being taken at each meeting. The members still continue to study the Secret Doctrine on alternate Monday evenings. The Lodge will feel severely the temporary loss of their President, Mr. Wm. Kingsland, who is going to Brussels for the winter.
Lectures. – During the past month Annie Besant has lectured at Bradford, Herne Hill, Maidenhead, Nottingham, Camden Town (three times), Upper Norwood, Chelsea, Reading (three times), Dublin, Wandsworth, Somerville Club (Oxford Street), Leicester (twice), St. George’s Hall (Langham Place), and Liverpool.
G. R. S. Mead has lectured at the Athenæum Hall (Tottenham Court Road), and at Hampden House (St. Pancras).
A significant fact is the interest in Theosophy which is now manifesting itself in the churches, both Anglican and Nonconformist. During the past month Herbert Burrows has several times been requested to address Christian congregations, and he has lectured to crowded audiences at the Congregational churches at Anerley and Stoke Newington, and to the Unitarians at Hackney. On October 29th, he also lectured to the Liberal Social Union, which is at the other extreme of thought, being mainly heterodox; a very large audience assembled and great interest was manifested.
New Centres. – A new Centre and Lending Library has been started at Workington, Cumberland. Address: 92, Victoria Road. Centres are also developing at Falmouth and Oxford.
The League is now responsible for a Debating Class, a Sewing Class, a Free Labour Bureau and Registry, two new Branches at Liverpool and Dublin, Reading Circles, and last but not least, a Crèche. The last activity deserves a word to itself.
It was decided not to open it before the sum of £60 had been collected, so as to ensure the rent and matron’s salary for the first year. The matron, whose services have been secured, holds exceptional references as to character and qualifications. A house in Townsend Road will at once be taken and by next month the Secretary of the League hopes to report that the Crèche is in full working order. Miss Kislingbury, who has had much experience in the management of children, has kindly consented to be the Secretary, and Mrs. Marshall is President. With such a President and Secretary, and a strong committee, the “Day Nursery and Kindergarten” cannot fail to be a success. It is intended for young babies and children from three weeks to four and five years of age, the children of women who have to leave their homes during the day to earn a livelihood. Every care and attention will be bestowed, and early tuition provided on the kindergarten system, under the supervision of a committee of ladies. No sectarian views of any sort will be put forward, but the management will be on a purely humanitarian basis. Although the Nursery is started by the Theosophical Society, no one joining in the work will be in the least degree 257 pledged to Theosophical views or opinions, and anyone volunteering their services will be heartily welcomed.
Contributions of all sorts, money, linen, the usual nursery paraphernalia, furniture, cooking utensils, will be thankfully received and may be sent to the Secretary of the Crèche, Miss E. Kislingbury, 17 and 19, Avenue Road, N.W.
| £ | s. | |
|---|---|---|
| Mrs. Crossley | 25 | 0 |
| Mrs. Williams | 2 | 0 |
| Mrs. Marshall | 5 | 0 |
| Mrs. Hunt | 1 | 0 |
| Mrs. Alsten | 0 | 5 |
| Mrs. Alderson | 1 | 0 |
| Mrs. Whyte | 0 | 10 |
| Mrs. Whitelaw | 1 | 0 |
| Mrs. Kilburn | 1 | 0 |
| Miss Tisdale | 1 | 0 |
| Mrs. Groves | 1 | 0 |
| Lady Portsmouth | 0 | 5 |
| Total | £39 | 0 |
| £ | s. | |
|---|---|---|
| Mrs. Simpson | 0 | 10 |
| Mrs. Wilkinson | 0 | 10 |
| Mrs. Gurner | 0 | 1 |
| Mrs. Williams | 3 | 0 |
| Friend | 1 | 0 |
| Friend | 0 | 10 |
| Miss Carwin | 0 | 10 |
| Mrs. Callard | 1 | 0 |
| Mrs. Raphael | 0 | 5 |
| Mrs. Holland | 0 | 10 |
| Miss Johnson | 2 | 0 |
| Miss Reeves | 1 | 0 |
| Miss Bailey | 0 | 10 |
| Miss Langridge | 0 | 5 |
| Mrs. Bruce | 0 | 10 |
| F. Radford, Esq. | 2 | 2 |
| Serv’ts of 17, 19, Avenue rd. | 0 | 6 |
| Col’d by Miss Kirkpatrick | 1 | 0 |
| Lady Meux | 20 | 0 |
| Mrs. Lowe | 0 | 10 |
| Total | £35 | 19 |
Isabel Cooper-Oakley,
Hon. Sec., L.T.W.
The Scottish Lodge. – There was a large gathering at the inaugural meeting of the Lodge on the 17th of October. Many questions were asked as to the recent correspondence in the Daily Chronicle. To the question which of the writers had a right to speak dogmatically in the name of Theosophy, it was answered, not one of them; each could only assert what he or she considered were Theosophic teachings. As to how to test the value of criticisms on other faiths: answered, Ask for authority; if none quoted, the criticism rests on the calibre of the critic merely; if it be anonymous, its value is nil.
An able paper by the Vice-President on the Mediæval Alchemists followed, in which he maintained with great learning and ability that the majority of those whose work was known were simply in search, and often successfully, of the secret of material transmutation of metals. But since in nearly every instance the historic alchemist had not discovered the powder of projection, but had received it from someone else and was unable to make it, he concluded that other and higher adepts were in the background and unknown to history.
The next meeting, held on the 31st, was a very crowded one, the largest ever held by the Scottish Lodge. The principal item in the programme was a paper by the President on “Occult Science in its relation to Physical Sciences”. The lecturer defined occultism as that part of the whole sum of human knowledge and wisdom which was kept secret at any time and only revealed to a few under strict pledges. This must be a 258 varying quantity – the more material and selfish mankind were, the less they might safely know. Of this, the hidden part of the knowledge of the processes and forces of nature might be called occult science. The object of this course is to point out to the scientist the teachings now made public of Occult Science, in order to show him a path along which investigation may proceed with certainty of good results.
It has been determined to print the transactions of the Scottish Lodge. The first number, which will shortly appear, will contain the two papers mentioned above, and a selection from the most interesting questions and answers, and the chief points discussed. The price will be 6d. a copy, and the Transactions can be ordered from the Librarian, Mr. A. P. Cattanach, 67, Brunswick Street, Edinburgh. An early application is suggested as most of the issue has been already subscribed for.
Dublin Lodge. – During October the Key to Theosophy Monday evening classes were well attended, and the studies varied by a chapter from Echoes from the Orient at the last meeting.
At the regular open meetings the attendance now consists of those who are more anxious to hear of Theosophy than to have an opportunity of ventilating ideas upon every conceivable topic. The Secret Doctrine class on Thursdays pursues its steady course.
Mrs. Besant’s lecture on the 30th brought a full house in the Antient Concert Rooms, and the manner in which the questions were put testified to the increasing thoughtfulness of the general public in Dublin on the leading ideas which Theosophy puts forward.
Among the latest publications in Swedish are the Perfect Way and Dreams and Dream Stories by the late Dr. Anna Kingsford. A systematic study of the Key to Theosophy has been arranged by the Swedish Branch. The request of our Scandinavian brethren to be allowed to continue their system of voluntary contributions has been acceded to by the Executive Committee.
Steady work is proceeding from our new Siège Français at Paris. The new series of Le Lotus Bleu has been sent out to the number of nine hundred. Large numbers of letters have been answered. Regular meetings are held every Wednesday evening, and a useful pamphlet for distribution has been struck off.
The most important event of the month in connection with the Lodge at Barcelona and its future progress, is the arrival in that town of our brother Montoliu, who intends making a stay of some duration. All our brothers awaited his arrival with lively impatience, knowing that his presence would enforce the regularity and activity necessary to the meetings and studies. Light on the Path has been translated by brother Montoliu, and has just been published under the title Luz en el Sendero. The translation is very faithful to the original, and its author has been able to preserve the mystical tone. Echoes from the Orient (Ecos del Oriente) of our brother William Q. Judge has also been translated and published. This, of which one cannot speak too highly, is certainly calculated to render great service to the cause of Theosophy in Spain. It has been decided to have printed several hundreds of collections of the first series of the Estudios Teosoficos, the second series being now begun. There 259 have also been sent to Brother Budd (Mexico) two hundred copies of Ecos del Oriente, Teosofia, Luz en el Sendero, and two hundred numbers of Estudios Teosoficos.
Brother Roviralta had previously distributed, in Spain and her colonies, 3,700 numbers of the Estudios Teosoficos, and 400 of this month’s issue; he has also sent 60 pamphlets, Theosophy and its Enemies (La Teosofia y sus Enemigos, par Montoliu), 60 pamphlets, What is Theosophy? also 194 copies of Ecos del Oriente.
The meetings of the Barcelona Group have been inaugurated this month by a Résumé of the different systems of Indian Philosophy, in order to make known the general terminology before commencing other studies. The Lodge at Madrid has four new members. We can therefore say that two branches exist, Madrid and Barcelona, since the number of members is greater than the minimum necessary for the formation of a Branch.
The Raza Futura (“The Coming Race” of Bulwer Lytton) is also finished (translated by Montoliu) and is to be published immediately at Madrid. We have sent from Madrid 440 pamphlets, What is Theosophy? to all parts of Corogue (Galicia) in order to further and give weight to the propaganda of our Brother Pol in that country.
The Path reports two new Branches, the Pleiades Lodge T.S., Soquel, California, and the Salt Lake T.S., Salt Lake City, Utah Terr.
The Catholic Sentinel, the leading R. C. weekly of the Northwest, issued at Portland, Oregon, has a leader on Theosophy which is a reprint word for word of an article by Annie Besant. Here we have a leading Roman Catholic journal printing verbatim and as an editorial leader, and advancing as its own conception of Theosophy, a Theosophical article by ourselves.
We notice with unqualified pleasure a branch of literary activity of the Brooklyn T.S.; papers on Theosophical subjects are typed out and provided with stout covers, thus forming a most valuable series of Theosophical pamphlets. The process is inexpensive, even if hired labour is employed, but in a society like the T.S., where so many of our members are expert typists, the expense is reduced to nil.
Col. Olcott, the President Founder, in California. – When it became known that Col. Olcott was to pass through San Francisco en route for Japan, preparations were at once made to give him an appropriate welcome. He was telegraphed to, to consent to the urgent request of the F.T.S. of Sacramento, the capital city, that he would stop for a day and give them the pleasure of meeting him and listening to an address upon Theosophy and H.P.B. A delegation, headed by Dr. J. S. Cook and other pioneer Theosophists, met the President at the station, and escorted him to the residence of Dr. Cook. On the same evening, Col. Olcott delivered a characteristic address upon “Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky”, to an audience that crowded Pythian Castle, the finest hall in the city. The local press reports of the lecture were full and fair.
Col. Olcott left Sacramento for San Francisco, October 3rd, and was met at the 16th Street Station, Oakland, by a delegation led by Mr. Judge, who had returned to San Francisco, having changed route and dates of his own tour especially to meet and welcome his worthy colleague, the President-Founder. Here was a sight to cheer the hearts of all true Theosophists – the President and Vice-President, the two remaining Founders of the T.S., meeting on these distant shores of the Pacific, grasping hands and greeting each other as brothers bound by no common tie.
260 Once under the shelter of the Pilgrim's Pacific Coast Rest, and in the care of hospitable Mrs. and Dr. J. A. Anderson, the Colonel prepared for a grand T.S. reception at Headquarters, and for the ordeal of interviews by reporters. Next morning the daily papers gave good and lengthy reports, headed with cuts of the Colonel, and the city was agog with curiosity and interest to see and hear the Theosophical Lion of the hour. The Metropolitan rarely holds so many intelligent and studious people as assembled to hear Col. Olcott speak upon “Theosophy and Madame Blavatsky”. In a few impressive words Mr. Judge reviewed the career of the lecturer, spoke of services rendered to his country in time of peril, and of his life-work of devotion to Theosophy; and as the Colonel rose to speak, a cordial burst of applause greeted him. For nearly an hour the audience listened with rapt attention as Colonel Olcott spoke of the founding of the T.S., its brave struggle against bigotry, conservatism and ignorance, and the grand success of the Society, as demonstrated by its universal and wide-spread power and influence in the minds of progressive and thinking people the world over. He spoke also of “my colleague”, she who, never knowing an hour’s freedom from physical pain, yet heroically thought, wrote and worked while life lasted, that the heavy Karma of the world might be lifted, even though she bore it upon already over-burdened shoulders; and last, of the bright, hopeful future of Theosophy, which, if the work of the Masters was carried on with the same fervent devotion, would leaven the whole world and rejoice the hearts of the Real Founders, who, with watchful eyes and loving hearts, noted each faithful labourer in the Great Work.
At the T.S. Reception given by Col. Olcott at Headquarters, every Theosophist in San Francisco and the vicinity who could go, attended. A right royal reception it was. Both the President and Vice-President spoke at length, after which general conversation followed, and only at a late hour did the gathering break up.
On October 8th, at 8 p.m., Col. Olcott, attended by thirty or forty ladies and gentlemen, members of local Branches, boarded the Japan steamer “Belgic”, and awaited the hour of sailing. Assembled on the deck of the great steamer were a host that surrounded the President, and eagerly listened to his words of counsel and encouragement, and his earnest wishes for the continued spread and power of Theosophy upon the Pacific coast.
Tour of the General Secretary. – W. Q. Judge is arousing all the Pacific Coast to enthusiastic interest in Theosophy. We have received newspaper reports of the most glowing description, and from private advices we learn that the audiences have been great, as many as 2,000 persons assembling at a time to listen to Theosophical teachings. He has spoken at Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Stockton, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and a dozen or more other places, and from each comes the same report of unbroken success. It is remarkable that on both sides of the Atlantic so great a “boom” should have marked the autumn following H.P.B.’s departure, and those who are in the rush of the work can have no doubt that the true Founders of the Society behind the veil are at once sending out the energy everywhere visible, and directing its flow.
261
Important Notice.
The second edition of H.P.B.’s masterpiece being exhausted, a third edition has to be put in hand immediately. Every effort is being made to thoroughly revise the new edition, and the editors earnestly request all students who may read this notice to send in as full lists of “errata” as possible. Verifications of references and quotations, mis-spellings, errors of indexing, indication of obscure passages, &c., &c., will be most thankfully received. It is important that the “errata” of the first part of Volume I. should be sent in immediately.
G. R. S. Mead.
Theosophical and Mystic Publications.
The Theosophist begins its XIIIth volume with the October number, and may it long enjoy a useful existence. P. C. Mukherji writes discursively on the “Antiquity of Aryan Evolution”, without however adding anything new in fact or theory. In speaking of alphabets, however, he reminds us that “In India, Manu, the legislatur, mentions a writing composed of letters the offspring of colours (Varna)”. Jehangir Sorabji writes in a somewhat exaggerated style of “Our Teacher”, in fact, to borrow from Horace, “projicit ampullas”, if not “sesquipedalia verba”. Under the title, “A Modern Rishi”, some account is given of the famous Kally Krishna Mitter, a man renowned throughout India for his learning, piety and good deeds. Babu Kally Krishna during his long life won the undivided affection of all who knew him, and in death retains that affection. He was identified with many important reforms and spent much time in relieving suffering by homœopathic remedies. He was learned in many languages and a great student of esoteric knowledge. Above all he reverenced H.P.B. “The last book this devoted student read and re-read, and caused to be kept open on a chair before him, was Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine. . . On his death-bed he read the book, propped up by pillows on all sides, every morning after he had heard the hymns his grand-daughters sang to him.” In fact, “the subject of his devoted study in later life was chiefly Theosophical writings”. J. W. Brodie Innes next writes on “Instruction: Oriental and Occidental”, and puts in a plea for Western Occultism, arguing that in the West four minds out of five will more readily take to Occidental than to Oriental systems of Occultism, and therefore it would be better to translate Sanskrit terms into Western terms, seeing that the ideas are the same. But adhuc sub judice lis est, and time is the judge. The translation of the “Tejo-bindu Upanishad of the Krishna-Yajur Veda” is continued. The sixth chapter is remarkable for the repeated identification of the individual soul with Brahm. Some idea may be had of the mysterious dignity of the original from the passage, “So ‘That’ is ‘I’, ‘That’ is ‘I’, ‘That’ alone is ‘I’. ‘That’ alone is ‘I’. The eternal Brahm alone is ‘I’.” But we must hear it chanted to appreciate it. This chapter is also remarkable for a category of quaint similes that are extremely instructive. A. Nilakantha Shâstri writes learnedly and interestingly on “Sravanam”, an important yearly ceremony celebrated in the fifth month, “a festive day brought round by the revolution of the sacred year”. An answer is attempted to the query, What year? Rama Prasad follows with a continuation of his “Astrology”, giving some exceedingly instructive information on the four Vedas. Thomas Williams writes briefly on “Karma and Fatalism”, dealing skilfully with the subject. “A Translation of the Sankhya-Tattwa-Kaumudi of Vachaspati Misra”, is commenced by Ganganatha Jha, B.A. The treatise belongs to the Sankhya school. The controversy on “Is Retrogression possible?” continues. We would venture to pour oil on the troubled waters as far as the legend of Bharata’s 262metamorphosis is concerned, by recalling to the minds of our learned brothers the story of Prajâpati and Rohit, the mystic buck and deer in the Aitareya Brâhmana. H. P. B. describes Rohit in the Theosophical Glossary as “the form assumed by Vâch (the female Logos and female aspect of Brahmâ, who created her out of one half of his body) to escape the amorous pursuits of her ‘father’, who transformed himself for that purpose into a buck or red deer”. Verb. sap.
The Path for October presents us with a paper by V. C. Lonakar, in which Brotherhood is treated from the point of view of the Bhagavad Gîtâ, under the title “The Criterion of Morality”. “This consciousness of unity, of undividedness, distinguishes the true moral sentiment, and that of personality, of separation, indicates immoral sentiments, as taught by Aryan philosophy”, writes the author; and the editor annotates, “Emerson defines virtue as being the adherence, in action, to the true nature of things”. Lily A. Long tells a beautiful tale of how the “Teacher's” friends raised an imperishable monument to him by service. William Q. Judge tells us “Why Races die out”. Dr. Keightley in writing on th difficult subject of “Karma and Free Will”, says, “freedom of will is only possible for man when he is in close alliance with nature and her laws”. W. Q. J. italicises some “Hidden Hints” from the Secret Doctrine concerning comets and cycles, and “Tea Table Talk” introduces us to a rival to Antonina and treats wisely of several psychic phenomena. Some selections from the Desatir bearing on “Karma” complete the articles. A. F. in reviewing the Theosophist rises in wrath against the carelessness of the editor in passing certain translations, and we agree with him. But are there two A. F.'s, one for reviewing the Theosophist and another who shuts his eyes when the pamphlets of the Oriental Department are around?
The Buddhist, in a note to a translation from Kâvyasekhara, gives the five hurtful trades as “the rearing of animals for slaughter, the manufacture of weapons of war, the preparation of meat, intoxicants and poisons for unlawful purposes”. There is an interesting discussion also as to the question whether Buddhism is atheistic or theistic. The editor takes the safe ground of the “mean”, and shows that Buddhism is atheistic in denying the concept of a personal deity, with exaggerated human attributes, but theistic, in the best sense of the word, in all else. O. A. A. Jayasekera contributes some notes from a work of Râjendralâl Mitra on “Paticcasamuppâda: the Doctrine of the Causes of Sentient Existence”, that will prove of interest to students of metaphysics and the philosophy of the Nidânas. Several papers are reprinted from the Theosophist, notably the article on Buddha Gaya by S. E Gopalacharlu, and “Three Aspects of the Theosophical Movement” by E. T. Sturdy. Annie Besant’s farewell address to the Hall of Science is also reprinted.
Le Lotus Bleu, in the second number of its new series, continues the useful study, entitled “Introduction à l'Etude de la Doctrine Secrète”. The writer completes his chronological coup d’œil of evolution, and, under the title “Cosmosophie”, proceeds to treat of the plan of the Universe according to that inexhaustible storehouse of esoteric instruction. This is good solid work. Dr. Bonnejoy writes enthusiastically on “Vegetarianism”. Under the title “Les Premières Épreuves”, our colleague, E. J. Coulomb, has delivered the first “conférence” in the rooms of our new Centre at Paris. It is a powerful lecture, both for matter and style. Most interesting is Amaravella’s article “Les Esprits de la Chine”, which should be read together with H.P.B.’s article in our present issue. Guyniot’s instructive paper on “Le Monde Invisible” and the continuation of the translation of the Key, complete an excellent number, which is further improved by a series of questions and answers on the same lines as the Forum, Prasnottara and Vâhan. We cordially recommend Le Lotus Bleu to those of our readers who are acquainted with French.
The Vahan, for November, is not quite as interesting as the number that preceded it; but then No. 3 was an especially good number. A question on Music from the occult standpoint produces an answer from “C.C.B.”, in which everything is suggested and nothing is stated. It is a difficult subject, however, and requires considerable knowledge for its proper treatment. The number is a good one, however, and the answers are mostly marked with sound common-sense.
Teosofisk Tidskrift translates several of the speeches at the late Convention, but most of its space is given to general news of the T.S. and of the movement in Sweden. A good answer to a question on Hypnotism is to be noticed.
Theosophical Siftings, Vol. IV., 263 No. 12, contains a paper on “Theosophy and Theosophical Christianity”. The writes thinks that there is a fundamental gulf between orthodox Christian belief and the philosophic pantheism to which so many of the members of the T.S. subscribe. The difference is expressed as the belief in “a Being, not in Being, . . . a Spirit, not in Spirit”. Two other papers complete the number, one by Miss Off on the “Requirements of a Theosophic Life”, and the other reprinted from one of the early numbers of Lucifer, entitled “Aspiration and Environment”.
Pauses sends us its second number from Bombay. It reprints two papers by Dr. Franz Hartmann, “H. P. Blavatsky and her Mission” and “What is true Christianity?”, “The Wilkesbarre Letters” by A. Fullerton, and other shorter papers from the Theosophist and Hermetist.
The Oriental Department, No. 8 of the American, and No. 1 of the European Section, contains a digest of the Garuda Purâna by M. N. Dvivedi, which would be improved by a few notes and an explanation to guard readers against imagining that any but a mystical meaning should be searched for in it. The European edition has fortunately been edited. The contribution on “Yoga Philosophy” will prove exceedingly valuable to students of the Voice of the Silence.
The slokas from the same source as the Golden Precepts given in the Theosophist (Vol. I., pp. 86, 87), originally appeared in the Dublin University Magazine in a most curious series of papers, entitled “The Dream of Ravan”. They occur in the last of the papers, April (not January) 1854. Several slokas are omitted which we take the liberty of reproducing.
After the words, “To me beholding, it appears Quietism itself, personified with hints”, add:
“As a painting of divine bliss: a sculptured form of the sovereign happiness; a grove of trees of joy, erectly standing:
“A bud of golden Champa; or a statue of ambrosia: or a many sprinkled herbary of fresh and tender green.”
After the simile of the diamonds, add:
“Like grains of tiny rubies, minute perhaps as atoms, so come forth over the whole body tips of tiny hair”.
At bottom of page 10, add:
“Behold the Sadhaka (the thaumaturgic saint) departeth, but the talk of his foot-steps remains behind: there in various places invisibility and the other supernatural faculties become acquired”.
Page 11 is not found in the Magazine. We hope to revert to this subject in our next issue and have something more to say about the “Dream of Ravan”.
Branch Work: Paper No. 21 of the American Section is entitled “A Theosophical view of Woman”, and the authoress is Mrs. Mercie M. Thirds. The paper has probably opened up much discussion in the Lodges that have listened to it. The idea, for instance, that it is the part of man to labour and of woman to suffer is a reckless challenge in an ordinary Lodge. No. 9 of the Indian Section reprints Annie Besant’s article on “Karma and Free Will” from the Path, and S. V. Edge makes some valuable suggestions for increased activity.
The Sphinx, for November, gives us a paper on “Hudson Tuttle”, the American trance-writer and speaker, whose contention is that the whole of modern Spiritualism and all that has grown out of it rests upon physical manifestations, and that to condemn them is to loosen the whole fabric and to force back enquirers into Materialism. In “Two Cases of Telepathy” are related two remarkable and well-attested cases of presentation of the astral form, one during the life of the body, the other in the hour of death. In the “Mystic in Madness” Dr. Kuhlenbeck contrasts the philosophy of Du Prel with that of a certain Dr. Specht who attacks Du Prel’s conclusions; Dr. Raphael von Koeber completes his paper on “Individualistic Monism”, and Franz Imkoff writes on “Hypnotism and its Practice”, a new work by Dr. Florel, of Zürich, in which the question of the morality of hypnotic suggestion is fully discussed. Correspondence on former articles closes a highly interesting number.
New Pamphlets. A number of cheap pamphlets are being rapidly produced and quite a new phase is coming over our Theosophical literature. There is a marked tendency in several of our writers whose articles fairly bristled with strange terms, to confine themselves to a style that is almost entirely innocent of every technicality. Annie Besant is responsible for two new pamphlets, The Sphinx of Theosophy, price 3d., and In Defence of Theosophy, price 2d. They are the reports of lectures delivered at the Portman Rooms and St. James’ Hall, London. Theosophy and Occultism, price 2d., is the reprint of the article in our last number on this subject by G. R. S. Mead, who is also responsible for a leaflet Theosophy and Religion (2s. 6d. per 100). E. T. Sturdy has written a short pamphlet entitled Theosophy and Ethics, price 1d. Womanhood and the Bible, by Libra, also 264 is a good pamphlet on this important subject; its price is 3d.
The A B C of Theosophy is a 1d. pamphlet published by Simpkin, Marshall & Co., from the pen of F. Snowden Ward. It has already run through several editions. The later editions are improved by the correction of several points which were obscure and misleading, and we now congratulate Mr. Ward on producing a most useful little pamphlet for distribution. All the above are procurable at the Theosophical Publishing Society, 7, Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C.
Le Catechisme Bouddhique, the French translation of Col. Olcott’s Buddhist Catechism, appears in a revised and enlarged edition, containing the twenty-eight new questions and answers lately added by the author.
The Indianopolis Letters on Theosophy is the title of a pamphlet by Alexander Fullerton, price 10 cents (6d.). It is a collection of letters contributed to The Sentinal, Indianopolis, Ind., and is a very useful pamphlet for enquirers.
Lux en el Sendero is the Spanish title of Light on the Path, it is sent free to all subscribers to Estudios Teosóficos. There is a courtly liberality in the literary doings of our Spanish members that argues well for their Theosophy.
The Hindoo Magazine is a new effort to revive the religious spirit of India, under the editorship of Amrita Lal Roy, 65, Okhil Mistry’s Lane, Calcutta. The object of the new venture is thus stated:
“We do not in this Magazine wish to preach the preëminence of the Hindoo religion over all others or to wean men from the faiths they follow. Our only object is to supply to those of our English-educated countrymen who are Hindoos by birth and instinct, the lost basis of their religious faith.”
This is an excellent object and we wish it every success. The subscription is Rs. 3 and single copies Ans. 4.
In Memoriam. The Dutch translation of this important series of articles from Lucifer has just reached us. If any answer to the S.P.R. report was needed, surely this will prove sufficient.
De Wilkesbarre Brieven is the Dutch translation of Alexander Fullerton’s useful pamphlet, “The Wilkesbarre Letters”. It is to be regretted that the list of Branches and names of officials printed at the end by the translator has not been brought up to date.
Our Budget.
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| Deficiency from last account | 130 | 14 | 8 |
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surplus from Lecture at St. James’ Hall | 73 | 17 | 2 |
| F. T. S. | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Half surplus from Star Club Lecture (sent by Star Club) | 6 | 10 | 0 |
| A Friend, per W. R. Old | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Part surplus from Wandsworth lecture (sent by Brixton Lodge) | 10 | 2 | 0 |
| Half surplus from Bradford lecture (sent by Bradford Lodge) | 9 | 10 | 0 |
| Total | £111 | 0 | 2 |
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deficiency | 19 | 14 | 6 |
Annie Besant, Treasurer.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mrs. Terrell | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| A Friend, per A. B. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Mrs. Bolton | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| C. I. Peer | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Total | £7 | 2 | 6 |
Annie Besant, Treasurer.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Paris” | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Kolly, Mme. | 0 | 19 | 0 |
| Fricke, Mr. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | £6 | 19 | 0 |
G. R. S. Mead, Treasurer.
No. 52 – December 1891
265 The Editor does not hold himself responsible for any opinions, whether religious, philosophical or social, expressed in signed articles.
Ought Theosophists to be Propagandists?
Ever since the Theosophical Society was founded it has been composed of two wings, united as to the object to be sought but differing as to the method of search. One wing was in favour of sowing broadcast the seeds of knowledge and truth, scattering them in every direction, so that if there chanced to be within reach of the sower a piece of good and fertile soil, ready to receive such germs, that ground might not be left barren for lack of the grain that therein might spring forth and bear abundantly fruit fitted for the feeding of man. The other wing preferred to avoid publicity as much as possible, and rather – so far as I understand its policy – to plant a seed carefully when fit soil was discovered, and to scatter none which might fall amid briars and on rocky places.
H. P. B., to whom this journal owes its being, was distinctly in favour of persistent and public propaganda, and was constantly urging all those who looked to her for guidance to spread in every direction the seed she placed in their hands. At the end of every century, she was never weary of saying, an attempt was made by the Masters of Wisdom to touch the heart and brain of mankind, and They patiently sent messengers, century after century, to sow the good seed. With the evolution of the race, the time had now come when many in the West were ready to receive the seed, and the only way of reaching these was to proclaim the Truth everywhere, so that those who were ready might hear and have opportunity of receiving it. When the century came to its end, the door would once more be closed, so that the time was brief and the need was urgent. The one chance of 266 carrying the Theosophical Society over the threshold of the twentieth century, and so of maintaining an agency which should continue to labour during the first seventy-five years of that century, and of preparing the minds of the people so that the next Messenger might find awaiting him a band of prepared disciples and an agency ready to his hand – the one chance of doing this lay in carrying on a vigorous propaganda in every direction, so that out of the many called a few might be found fit to carry on the work.
Now this policy is vehemently disapproved by some who in the columns of a contemporary are carrying on an attack on myself marked by a liberal display of the qualities they disapprove. Hasty judgment, opinions formed without knowledge, condemnation expressed without enquiry, are the somewhat curious weapons of a school that prides itself on moderation; but this matters little so far as I am personally concerned. What does matter is the question of policy: Ought Theosophists to be propagandists?
For those who regard H. P. Blavatsky as the mouthpiece of “Those behind the veil”, the answer must, of course, be “Yes”. But there is authority other than her personal opinion on this point. One of the Masters has stated in a letter published to the world that the great need of the Western World is a knowledge of the doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma, and, apart from this, as They thought fit to found an exoteric society, one might fairly conclude that it was to do exoteric work. The doctrines of Brotherhood, of Reincarnation, of Karma, of the sevenfold nature of the constitution of Man and of the Universe – these, with some others concerned with the evolution of man and with his future destiny, are doctrines, it seems to me, given out with a view to their being made widely known. The Fifth Race has already reached the point at which the germs of its sixth sub-race – its last but one – are appearing: it is in its Manasic period, its fifth sub-race, and is itself the Manasic Race of the Fourth Round. Not only so, but, in the West, science is beginning to step into kingdoms hitherto unknown, and to lay its grasp on forces hitherto carefully concealed. Already we see Society exposed to new dangers from the knowledge of what is called hypnotism, to all the ghastly possibilities brought within range by the power of hypnotic suggestion. Nothing can avail to stop this forward movement of the race, and all that remains is to endeavour to raise the moral standard, to base the Brotherhood of Man on a rational and intelligible foundation, so that it may serve as an effective curb on the infliction of injury, to deepen the sense of responsibility by spreading the knowledge of Reincarnation, and to stimulate the feeling of duty by the teaching 267 of Karmic law. Surely this knowledge, so vital to the well-being of the race, is not to be laid aside, hidden in a napkin, for the private consumption of the few, but is rather to be spread abroad everywhere for the helping of man.
For there is here no question of Occultism, of knowledge for which the race is as yet unprepared, and the spreading of which would cause evil rather than good. I grant to the fullest that Occultism is not a matter for propaganda, either by book or by tongue. It always has been, and probably always must be, a lesson to be imparted privately by teacher to pupil, to be slowly learned by individual effort. All that debate arises on is the method of propaganda of truths admittedly intended for publication. There is no secret about the doctrines above-named; but it is alleged that to teach them by books is right, to teach them from the platform is wrong. Bluntly put, this means that they are to be kept as the possession and for the enjoyment of highly cultivated and wealthy persons, while the poor shall be left in darkness and in ignorance. It is not a question of what shall be told, but of who shall be told, what public shall be addressed.
Now the Theosophical Society is a Brotherhood that recognises no distinction of class, and Those Who founded it, like the Buddha and Jesus, are no respecters of persons. In India, Col. Olcott was sent lecturing throughout the length and breadth of the land. In England, H. P. Blavatsky bade me visit all towns in which I could get a hearing, and proclaim the teachings of Theosophy. So that as far as I am personally concerned, propaganda in every suitable form, by platform, pen, private conversation and correspondence, all in their several ways are equally available and equally right.
But I cannot see that any dispute should arise in this matter, since each worker is answerable for his own work, and not for the work of other people. Each is judged by the Good Law and answers to Karma, and the judgment of his fellows is but of small import. One thing is certain: that those who follow the teaching laid down for us by H. P. Blavatsky must not judge others because their methods and ways are not ours. We need not follow them ourselves, but we have no right to judge their conduct. For them their own way may be the best way; nay, if it be chosen with full desire to do the right, it is the best way. All labourers are needed; all work done with single eye and pure motive is good work; no portion of the field must be left uncultivated, and if all did the same some parts would be over cultivated, and others would be left untended. The knowledge that we are trying to follow the lines laid down for us by our Teacher while she was with us should not lead us to condemn those who 268 follow other roads, since they, like ourselves, are trying to do the best. If they blame us hastily, it is for us to remember that we stand or fall each to his own Master, not to our brethren. If our work be good, it will stand, let who will criticise us or condemn, and fuller knowledge of our ways and aims will probably soften harsh judgments and correct unkind views. The main thing is that each should do his own work, i.e., the work for which he is best fitted, to the very fullest of his powers, and then, indifferent to all save Duty, leave the results to the Good Law.
In Confirmation of Occultism.
Modern Science is evidently nearing the borderland of the domain of Occultism. The heretical science of Theosophy seems likely to become orthodox in the near future. We take the following from the Pall Mall Gazette of November 14th: –
Telegraphy without Wires.
Last night at the third annual dinner of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Professor William Crookes, in proposing the toast of the evening, “Electricity in relation to science,” said that they had happily outgrown the preposterous notion that research in any department of science was mere waste of time. The facts of electrolysis were by no means either completely detected or co-ordinated. They pointed to the great probability that electricity was atomic, that an electrical atom was as definite a quantity as a chemical atom. It had been computed that in a single cubic foot of the ether which filled all space there were locked up 10,000 foot tons of energy which had hitherto escaped notice. To unlock this boundless store and subdue it to the service of man was a task which awaited the electrician of the future. The latest researches gave well-founded hopes that this vast storehouse of power was not hopelessly inaccessible. Up to the present time they had been acquainted with only a very narrow range of ethereal vibrations; but the researches of Lodge in England and Hertz in Germany gave an almost infinite range of ethereal vibrations or electrical rays from wave-lengths of thousands of miles down to a few feet. Here was unfolded a new and astonishing universe – one which it was hard to conceive should be powerless to transmit and impart intelligence. Professor Nikola Tesla had lighted a room by producing in it such a condition that an illuminating appliance might be placed anywhere and lighted without being electrically connected with anything. He suspended two sheets of metal, each connected with one of the terminals of the coil. If an exhausted tube was carried anywhere between these sheets, and placed anywhere, it remained always luminous. The extent to which this method of illumination might be practically available experiment alone could decide. From Tesla’s researches it appeared that a true flame could now be produced without chemical aid. The slower vibrations to which he (the speaker) had referred revealed the bewildering possibility of telegraphy without wires, posts, cables, or any of our present costly appliances. It was vain to attempt to picture the marvels of the future. Progress, as Dean Swift observed, might be too fast for endurance. Sufficient for this generation were the wonders thereof.
A Bewitched Life
281
Reincarnation and Waste in Nature.
Everyone who has thought about reincarnation must have been struck with the enormous waste of time involved in the entity starting over and over again from the zero point of knowledge, and having to spend a fifth, say, of an ordinary life, scarcely so much in acquiring knowledge, as in such elementary studies as constitute keys to knowledge. Among ourselves, “heirs to all the ages”, the time spent in making progress in learning how to learn, is prodigious; but the loss is small compared with that suffered by members of other races, such for instance as those who have no alphabet. Is nature wasteful throughout? Or is the wasted time linked with the doctrine of reincarnation to be fairly taken account of as an argument against the truth of the doctrine? I say “waste”; not “seeming waste”; for from the standpoint of the outward, measuring the value of effort in the coin of work done, it is waste pure and simple, no less than when Sisyphus rolled his stone uphill only to have it roll down again, to have to start afresh in each incarnation in learning how to use the functioning body with its brain.
Glancing for a moment from man to the world of lives about us, the impression of wasted effort only deepens. It is true, that the lives of the countless organisms that have built up our chalk beds by such slow accretions; or of coral insects to whom whole habitable islands are due; or of termites who in some countries make and keep land fertile, as earthworms do in Europe (these being examples only), are not wasted in the total outcome, even on the plane of material progress. But even in such cases, it is a certain residuum only that helps sensibly to the indicated result. How many chalk beds or limestone strata are formed only to be covered over by hundreds, or it may be thousands of feet of superincumbent rocks; how many coral reefs are formed only to be disintegrated without subservience to any obvious use; how many termites and earthworms expend their energies without result, or even mischievously? Blindly all these organisms work, and in many, if not in most instances, with no gain to progress. In a vast number of instances, organisms exist only to be the pest of other organisms: not simply as devourers, in the fashion of the pike 282 or tiger, but as burrowing or egg-depositing parasites, said by some (with what truth I do not know, and it seems difficult to determine) to outnumber all the rest.
Reflections like these are trite enough, and may be amplified or illustrated according to knowledge and habitude of thought. It is so much the fashion to assume that everything is for the best, and does good all round, that a poet scarcely dares to sing of “Nature red in tooth and claw” without at least suggesting that things may, in some obscure, unimaginable way, be preparing to change for the better. But is it wise in us to try to blind ourselves to facts? Let us rather lock them full in the face, and consider whether or no there is “aught in them worth the knowing”, preferring truth, if needs must be, to mental peace and quietness.
To my mind, then, the idea that waste, whether seeming or real (and it is real enough in a certain sense) is involved in reincarnations, does not put the doctrine of these outside the analogies about us of Nature's working.
But let us now turn our eyes away from “material” results (if the expression may be pardoned) and consider a little what is involved in the idea of Evolution, taking the word in its widest sense, alike inclusive of Darwinian and of Occult views. The latter recognise push – push from within outwards – or from above downwards and again upwards, as lying at the back of all evolution. The former involves the results of the action of such “push” without necessarily any committal to its recognition, some even rejecting, or regarding as unnecessary, any hypothesis assuming spirit, or a vital principle, acting on or within matter. The difference of view in the two schools is, perhaps, more verbal than real, since all depends on the definition of “matter”. Matter is admitted to have “potencies”, whatever the word may be meant to mean. But if we make “potencies” =“powers” – no great liberty to take – we get within sight of the Occultist’s view.
To come straight to the point, if we admit, say as a hypothesis to be tested by observation, correlation and experience, an Aim to things, an Ideal state towards which things have an upward trend; then our little school-house, this earth of ours, where things “evolve”, from the mineral to Man, is where the one necessary is effort. In other words, a state of struggle. What the struggle shall be about matters next to nothing, since the training of the molecule, or of the organism, or of what other form of matter having “potencies”, you will, better and more perfectly to express the substance of which it is the form, is the immediate end to be attained. Why? Because no other way is consistent with the hypothesis started with. But if the training is confined to each molecule – each organism – with no continuity between it and its succedent, no advance could be made. The stone is rolled uphill only to tumble back, forever and forever. Hence, the hypothesis further involves some sort of heredity, with 283 transmission of acquired faculties. This is in dispute; but our hypothesis involves it nevertheless. Let us now substitute for the idea of heredity, that of a specialisation of the universal mind, seeking expression in outward garb, in each unit, of whatever order. Then as the unit becomes effete, “dies”, or is transferred to a position where activity is precluded, that specialisation, having acquired a “colour” say, for want of a better word – seizes another form in which to function. Some experience has been gained, a better grip is taken of the next tool for expression. This is reincarnation, stated in the most general terms within my reach.
Now we can see how, or whether, this doctrine of reincarnation, applied universally, may help us to a clue to the meaning of the awful waste going on, that is, waste so far as useful result to effort put forth goes.
The one result of “effort” which on the hypothesis stated, never is nor can be wasted, is then, an evolution of “potencies”. Ultimately, of course, such evolution must tell on the physical plane. But that is the consequence of a consequence, and it cannot be traced in detail. Nature is very shy. In a sense, her operations may be traced in detail, or there could be no science, as commonly understood. But there is a lovely reticence as regards her inner laws, and the operations of her higher forces. “Within the vail”, conceivably sweetly smiling at her children’s vagaries, she sits waiting for those children to grow in reverence and in truth-seeking for its own sake, and in dissatisfaction with seemings, before she rewards the longings herself has nourished.
X.
Pearls from Sages.
“The dwelling of Kabir is on a mountain top, and a narrow path leads up to it; an ant cannot put his foot on it, but a pious man can drive up an ox.”
“That a drop falls in the ocean all can perceive, but that the drop and the ocean are one few can comprehend.”
“The city of Hari is to the east, that of Ali to the west, but explore your own heart, for there are both Râma and Karim.”
“The master is helpless when the scholar is inapt. It is blowing through a bamboo to teach wisdom to the dull.”
“Even as you see your countenance in a mirror, or your shadow in still water; so behold Râma in your minds, because He is with all.”
“These two men are over Paradise, a master endowed with patience, a poor man who can find the means to give.”
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“A weak mind is like a microscope which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.”
“Truth is the ladder mounting to heaven, as necessary as is a vessel for traversing the sea.”
“There is no higher duty than to work for the good of the whole world.”
“Though the vessels differ, the water is the same: though the flames be of various lamps, the illumination is one.”
“Mind is to me what the rudder is to the ship. By the use of it I sail my frail barque over the stormy seas of this life.”
“Thought, reason, analysis are the stomach of the mind. Here the fire is extracted from facts, as life from food in the physical stomach. Doubt is indigestion. He who digests the facts and phenomena of life, and still doubts the immortality of man, has mental dyspepsia.”
“Our acts make and unmake us.”
“Faith is to soul what knowledge is to mind.”
“That which is born is the death of something else.”
“Man! proud and haughty that thou art, Nature thinks as much of a mosquito as she does of thee!”
“None can be truly great, unless he has suffered.”
“There is a God! nay, many, but if they are superior to you it is your own fault. You may have been a God yourself at some time, and you may be again with proper effort.”
“We have moved like a wagon so long in one rut that it is almost impossible to get out of it.”
“The gigantic evils of this life come from the desire to rule others, or to make others do as you wish them to do.”
“The greater the grossness, the greater the power when the victory is won. Paul understood this. He says in substance – ‘Where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound’.”
“Power dwells in silence and secrecy, more in thought than in word – more in a look than in a blow, if you know how to look.”
“Man creates himself, and all the essentials of his being, his health, happiness, heavens and hells.”
“Water is prolific; all things gestate in water. The waters of the human soul are wrung out of the heart by real or imaginary wrongs. There is no growth without moisture. The dews that give life to vegetation are Nature’s tears. The great soul has a soft weeping heart. The small soul has no tears in it to shed . . . . Jesus wept, but we have no knowledge of his ever laughing. Gautama never smiled after he forsook his crown and his family for the forest and the yellow robes of asceticism. Apollonius, Socrates, and Plato were not laughing men.”
“The torment of envy is like a grain of sand in the eye.”
“Heine finely says of Herder, that ‘instead of inquisitorially judging nations according to the degrees of their faith, he regarded Humanity as a harp in the hands of a Great Master, and each people a special string, helping to the harmony of the whole’.”
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“Remember Him who has seen numberless Mahomets, Vishnus, Shivas, come and go, and who is not found by one who forgets or turns away from the poor.”
“Before earth was for us, we were one; before time was for us, we were one – even as we shall be one when there is no time for us any more.”
“Man is to man, as one portion of eternity to another, and as eternity would be imperfect if one moment should be removed, so also the earth would be imperfect if one man should be taken from it before his appointed time.”
“There is no great merit in any outward act, salvation depends upon the inward motive that provokes the deed.”
“Heaven is sure to bring to pass the thing of which heaven has originated the purpose.”
“The riding-hook disturbs the elephant, a thorn injures the foot, a hair blinds the eye, but desire, its mere conception, overthrows the spirit.”
“It is not wine that makes the drunkard, but vice.”
“There is no painful wound so bad as sorrow, no piercing arrow so sharp as folly.”
“As the bees make honey, gathering into one mass, into unity, the sweet juices of various plants, as these juices cannot distinguish themselves the one from the other and the juices of this plant and that, so all these creatures, though they are one in the real, know not that they are one in the real.”
“He who overcomes contemptible Thirst (difficult to be conquered in this world), sufferings fall off from him, like water drops from the lotus-leaf.”
“Liberality, courtesy, kindness, and unselfishness, these are to the world what the linch-pin is to the chariot.”
“And as where is heat, there is also cold, so where the threefold fire of lust, hatred and ignorance is, there Nirvâna must be sought.”
“The sun which shines to-day once set, so much less of life remains ! Ah, what joy can there be in this condition, resembling the fish in ever-shallowing waters!”
“Wisdom is as sandals on the feet to him who walks.”
“There is no misery greater than body, there is no joy like its dereliction.”
“As birds repair to a tree to dwell therein, so all this universe repairs to the supreme One.”
“God felt in the atom makes the whole world divine.”
“Truth is the best of relatives.”
“To love nothing, to hate nothing, to have no likes or dislikes, to have no prejudices, no tastes, no preferences – this is to be free.”
286
The Dream of Ravan.[8]
In the caves of Eastern Sibyl what curious leaves lie hidden, or go whirling in the wind, written over with strange hieroglyphic characters, not without deep meaning, akin to prophetic –
Teste David cum Sibylla. |
Fragmentary – incomplete – hard to put together, yet furnishing here and there when the attempt is made a piece of chance mosaic that engages our attention like the forms in the moss-stone. Such a bundle of Sibylline leaves is the “Dream of Ravan”.
What Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice is to the Iliad, the Dream of Ravan is to the Râmâyana; for although there is in it much of the sad and serious, all these graver parts are bound together by matter of a light and sometimes ludicrous character. It is free in this respect as Don Juan; and after rising from a perusal, one may be puzzled to decide if the whole poem is to be taken as having a deep and serious moral, or is a mere jeu d’esprit.
[The following is a curious passage from one of the articles: – ]
Out of the Purple or dark Violet has struggled the Red: out of the Red is breathed the Orange. The movement of the Orange Joy is three-fold. If, holding to its root in the Red, it goeth forth in a circle according to pravritti, or procession, till it re-enters the primordial Violet, it produces the glad Green of universal nature wherein all living things rejoice and on which the fairies love to dance. If preferring the way of nivritti, or retrocession into itself – it re-enters its fountain the Red, and the common fountain the Violet, all three coalesce and merge into pure light – then the Red is subject unto the Violet and Light is all in all.
If casting itself off from its fountain the Red and not tending towards their common parent the Violet, it seeks to stand alone, it becometh in its proud isolation a deadly venemous Yellow, the colour of serpents and dragons and irredeemable Brahma Rakshasas.
The Titanic nature is not of this kind: for though the Tamas nature immensely predominates, it still partakes largely of the Rajas and in lesser measure of the Satva quality. The problem to be solved in the case of Titanic Ravan – and in greater or less degree of every soul in proportion
287
as it partakes of the Titanic nature, as all their emerging must in some measure – is how shall the Tamas be changed into the Satva or be penetrated and ruled by it? – how shall matter re-ascend and become spirit? – the gross darkness and stolid stupidity of the tree or the animal be illumined into self-consciousness, reflection, reason, knowledge? – the blind instinct and coarse desires of the Titan or Titanic man, be sublimed into the eternal conscious principles, self-renunciation and pure ideality of life?
This can only be accomplished in one way, and that way lies through the Rajas – the life of passion, the life of suffering. The result of every passion of our nature, even love, nay of love more than of all others, is suffering and sorrow. The first awakening of unconscious matter into the consciousness of mere animal life is through physical pain: and the process is carried still further by the mental suffering which is the very nature of the soul’s emotional life.
Through the anguish of the fire alone can the black coal of the mine become transmuted into light. And so the sorrow and anguish which result inevitably from the passions in the Rajas or emotional life, constitute the purifying fire designed to purge away the dross of our Titanic nature and transmute it into the pure Satva where purity, goodness, and truth are predominant. Brute appetite and blind impulse are first superseded by passion, and passion working, through sorrow and the reflection and sympathy which sorrow begets, its own extinction, finally emerges in and is swallowed up in love and absolute resignation. This philosophy seems to rest on a basis of unquestionable truth. For, understood in all its depth, it is identical, in ultimate results, with the way of the Cross.
[There is also a hymn called –
The following are two out of eight verses: – ]
VII. |
[Upon the return of Ravan from a hard fought day he retires to sleep and has a fearful dream, and awaking in alarm summons, like Belshazzar, all his wise men and counsellors to interpret its meaning. Ravan then proceeds to expound his dream, in which he wandered in a desolate land with “a beautiful one” who –
“Seemed as tho’ she were one with whom in some long anterior birth, |
288 The Rishis here interrupt with the following discourse.]
Rávan, Rávan, thou errest, beware! |
289
Joined or dissevered, averted or fond, |
Through all the scenes and incidents, Oh Titan! pictured in the succession of visions – for it is vision upon vision which compose thy mysterious dream – there is a foreshadowing and representation of real events, that lie embosomed in the far future, far beyond the precincts of thy present life, but a representation that is dim and indistinct, wrought out in the capricious lines and hues that constitute the hieroglyphic language of fantasy, into which the events of this outer, solid world must generally be translated, before they can either be foreshadowed or reproduced in the phantasmal sphere of dreams.
For know, Oh Titan! the true nature of man, and the various conditions of being under which he exists, and of consciousness under which he perceives.
These are represented to us in the Vedânta system under three distinct aspects, which, however, contain really one and the same idea, more summarily expressed, or more fully developed.
In the first, most summary view man is a duality; he comprises two modes of existence – one natural, one reversed. The original, normal, and true mode of his being, and which is therefore characterised by the term Sva-Rûpa, or Own-form, is the Spirit-condition (Âtma-dasha): in this his substance or being is consolidated Being-Thought-Bliss – in one (sachchidânandaghana): his state eternal Sûrya, or ecstasy. The opposite or reversed mode of his being is the Life-condition (Jîva-dashâ), comprising a subtle inward body or soul, and a gross outward body of matter, existing in the two states of dreaming and waking. Between these two conditions lies a gulf of Lethe, or total unconsciousness – a profound and dreamless sleep.
In the second view, which is given in the Tattva Bodha, and many other works, the idea is further expanded: man is there represented as a prismatic trinity, veiling and looked through by a primordial unity of light – gross outward body; subtle internal body or soul; a being neither body nor soul, but absolute self-forgetfulness, called the cause body, because it is the original sin of ignorance of his true nature which precipitates him from the spirit into the life-condition. These three bodies, existing in the waking, dreaming, sleeping states, are all known, witnessed, and watched, by the spirit which standeth behind and apart from them, in the unwinking vigilance of ecstasy or spirit-waking.
This prepares us for, and conducts us to, the complete and fully 290 developed view of man as a quaternity, in explaining which we must retread the same ground we have already gone over, but with more care and deliberation.
There are four spheres of existence, one enfolding the other – the inmost sphere of Turîya, in which the individualised spirit lives the ecstatic life; the sphere of transition, or Lethe, in which the spirit, plunged in the ocean of Ajñâna or total unconsciousness, and utterly forgetting its real self, undergoes a change of gnostic tendency [polarity?]; and from not knowing at all, or absolute unconsciousness, emerges on the hither side of that Lethean boundary to a false or reversed knowledge of things (viparita jñâna), under the influence of an illusive Prajña, or belief in, and tendency to, knowledge outward from itself, in which delusion it thoroughly believes, and now endeavours to realise: – whereas the true knowledge which it had in the state of Turîya or the ecstatic life, was all within itself, in which it intuitively knew and experienced all things. And from the sphere of Prajña, or out-knowing – this struggle to reach and recover outside itself all that it once possessed within itself, and lost, – to regain for the lost intuition an objective perception through the senses and understanding, – in which the spirit became an intelligence, – it merges into the third sphere of dreams, where it believes in a universe of light and shade, and where all existence is in the way of Abhasa, or phantasm. There it imagines itself into the Linga-deha (Psyche), or subtle, semi-material, ethereal soul, composed of a vibrating or knowing pentad, and a breathing or undulating pentad. The vibrating or knowing pentad consists of simple consciousness radiating into four different forms of knowledge – the egoity or consciousness of self; the ever-changing, devising, wishing mind, imagination or fancy; the thinking, reflecting, remembering faculty; and the apprehending and determining understanding or judgment. The breathing or undulating pentad contains the five vital auræ – namely, the breath of life, and the four nervous æthers that produce sensation, motion and the other vital phenomena.
From this subtle personification and phantasmal sphere, in due time it progresses into the fourth or outmost sphere, where matter and sense are triumphant; where the universe is believed a solid reality; where all things exist in the mode of Akara, substantial form; and where that, which successively forgot itself from spirit into absolute unconsciousness and awoke on this side of that boundary of oblivion into an intelligence struggling outward, and from this outward struggling intelligence imagined itself into a conscious, feeling, breathing, nervous soul, prepared for further clothing, now out-realises itself from soul into a body, with five senses or organs of perception, and five organs of action, to suit it for knowing and acting in the external world, which it once held within, but has now wrought out of itself. The first or spiritual state was ecstasy; from 291 ecstasy it forgot itself into deep sleep; from profound sleep it awoke out of unconsciousness, but still within itself, into the internal world of dreams; from dreaming it passed finally into the thoroughly waking state, and the outer world of sense. Each state has an embodiment of ideas or language of its own. The universal, eternal, ever-present intuitions that be eternally with the spirit in the first, are in the second utterly forgotten for a time, and then emerge reversed, limited, and translated into divided successive intellections, or gropings, rather, of a struggling and as yet unorganised intelligence, having reference to place and time, and an external historical world, which it seeks but cannot all at once realise outside itself. In the third they become pictured by a creative fantasy into phantasms of persons, things and events, in a world of light and shade within us, which is visible even when the eyes are sealed in dreaming slumber, and is a prophecy and forecast shadow of the solid world that is coming. In the fourth the out-forming or objectivity is complete. They are embodied by the senses into hard external realities in a world without us. That ancient seer (Kavi Purâna) which the Gîtâ and the Mahâbhârata mention as abiding in the breast of each, is first a prophet and poet; then he falls asleep and awakes as a blindfold logician and historian, without materials for reasoning, or a world for events, but groping towards them; next a painter, with an ear for inward phantasmal music too: at last a sculptor carving out hard palpable solidities. Hence the events destined to occur in this outer world can never be either foreshown or represented with complete exactitude in the sphere of dreams, but must be translated into its pictorial and fantastical language.
But besides this dim, prophetic character, referring to isolated events in time, thy dream, like all other dreams, has a more universal and enduring significance, setting forth, as it does, in a series of vivid symbols, a crowd of spiritual truths and allegories that are eternally true to the human soul. The prophetic hieroglyphics it is not given me to read. That may lie within the compass of Marîcha’s powers, for he treads the difficult and dangerous paths of thaumaturgy, and ventures on the perilous gaze into the dread future. Mine be it simply to unfold before thine eyes, oh king! the symbolic and moral interpretation of the vision, which if thou be wise will have for thee a profound, because a more eternal, interest than the mere foretelling of transitory events.
That desolate land in which thou didst wander, Oh Titan! with thy beautiful and mysterious companion, where silent cities strewed the desert, in which no life stirred, and no voice was heard in the streets, but all was death and desolation; where everything lay still or petrified; where gigantic ruins lay around, and the colossal forms of a byegone life stare out on thee from stone, with an impress of solemn and eternal beauty 292 uttering a moan to the first beams of the rising sun, offers a true type of this mournful world. For what, in truth, is this earth but one immense ruin or heap of ruins – a land of death and desolation – a desert strewn with the fragments of an extinct past?
If we contemplate external nature, we find in its stupendous mountain chains, its gigantic volcanic peaks, shooting up aloof into the sky – its abrupt masses of scarped rocks and tablelands – its scattered, solitary, gigantic stones, far from their parent mountains – its tremendous clefts and chasms, and valleys, the evidences and traces of immense convulsions in past ages. The whole earth appears a vast assemblage of sublime ruins. When we consult more closely the materials which form these ruins, we find with astonishment that they, too, are composed of other ruins; we find everywhere the marks of an extinct world. A gigantic vegetation of consummate beauty in its forms; broken fragments, too, of a creation of living creatures, colossal in size, wonderful in structure, and awful in power, surround us everywhere. The dead faces of extinct organisations look out on us from stone on every side with their sad, eternal beauty; and, as every fresh sun dawns upon a world of ruins, a mournful plaint is wailed forth from all past creations to greet his rising, which recalls to them their own former being.
Even thus, oh sun! in thy eternal youth, |
If we turn, continued the Rishi, from external nature to what is called the living world, we look in vain for life. Death meets us at every turn. The terrible Yama is everywhere. The whole animal creation appears upon the scene merely to pass away by some form of violent death. To the peaceful herds grazing on the hillside, Yama comes in the guise of the tiger; to the innocent bleating sheep as wolf or hyena. The snake seizes the frog from his moist bed and drags him into his hole, or his crevice among the stones, crushing his limbs in the traction. The hawk pierces with his cruel beak the poor sparrow; the sparrow, in turn, transfixes or carries off the grub. Bird preys on bird, fish on fish, as it is written in the Mahâbhârata:
The stronger fishes, after their kind, prey on the weaker fish, |
293 But man himself is the most terrible incarnation of Yama. He plunges with a savage joy into the thicket of bamboo or sugar-cane to attack and slay the boar. He pursues over the plain the timid and graceful antelope; his arrows outstrip its fleetness; and the exhausted creature, that erst bounded in beauty and freedom, falls sobbing to the earth and expires in torture. He gathers the dumb and patient sheep, and the helpless lambs, from the pastures where they bleated for joy, and consigns them to the slaughter-house. Behold yon porters passing even now the court gate with baskets on their heads full of the beautiful plumage of the Cingalese cocks gathered from the villages round Lankâ, sitting happy together, all unconscious of their coming doom. They are bearing them to the camp to feed thy military followers.
The festivity of man is the signal of death to the humbler creatures of the earth: he rejoices or weds, and they die as the materials of his joy, victims immolated to his household gods. Even those creatures, upon whose flesh he has not yet learned to feed, he harasses to death by more protracted and painful means. The horse, that in his youth bore him in the day of battle or the pompous ceremonial, is, when age advances and his fire abates, consigned to the merciless Vaishya, who trades in hired chariots; and you behold thousands of those wretched creatures, lean, lacerated, and panting, driven by male Durgâs (furies) through the city without respite from sunrise till midnight, till at last they drop and expire in harness, or are rudely taken out and cast aside into some corner to die unseen and unpitied. And the dog, the honest friend of man; and the cat, self-adorning, playful, capricious, coy, timid, watchful, secretive, house-loving, but ever affectionate when gently treated, the friend and – be not offended, good Mandodari, for thou knowest their strong attachments – in some respects the type of woman, and the playfellow of children, the household Numen and hieroglyphic of domestic life – what becomes of these? Who sees their end? Into what byway solitudes, what holes and corners do they creep, led by a mournful instinct of nature to conceal their agonies and yield up their breath? Ah! how many tragedies of animal agony daily take place not far from the dwellings of man, and he knows it not, or knowing, lays it not to heart, or laughs in scorn of sympathy for animal suffering! And yet all creatures, Manu teaches, have their life in that awful Spirit in whom man, too, lives, and in them as in man that Spirit liveth –
Sarva-bhûteshu chatmanam, sarva-bhûtâni chatmani |
In all creatures the Spirit, and all creatures in the Spirit, |
And let us look at man himself. Is life to be found in his dwelling? Alas! from the cradle to the cemetery where his body is laid upon the pyre, is not his course one long cry of suffering, and sorrow, and terror – 294 one long reminiscence and foretaste of death? The householder in the prime of manhood, and his blooming, comely matron, look down on either side upon two valleys of mourning. In one are the cherished memories of beloved parents; she weeping for the beloved father, he for the poor tender mother. In the other, the idolised forms of children snatched prematurely from their arms, and wept alike by both; by her in loud lamentation, by him in stifled sobs and hidden tears. The mother dies giving birth to her babe, or lives to weep ere long over its corpse. Disease haunts man from his birth. Go into the mighty city of Lankâ. In every street there passes you a funeral procession, with its red powder, its lugubrious flowers, its mournful rolling ululatus, and in its rear the mournful women stand before the door in a circle, beating their breasts. In every house there is a cry and a grief – an old man expiring; a child struggling: a strong man agonised; a woman weeping; a little girl with frightened and tearful face. And, as if the terrible avenger Yama had not imposed on humanity a sufficient measure of suffering and death, man goes forth himself in gold, and plumes, and gay caparisons, to crush the limbs, and dash out the brains, and pierce the heart and bowels of his fellow man. And on the battle-field are left horrible sights, terrible cries, and fearful smells of death. And in the city the women weep and break their bangles and shave their heads, and put on grey unbleached or russet garments, and are thenceforth held to be of evil omen. Oh, tragic man! whence is all this death in thy life? Alas! it is because an inward moral death reigns throughout all, that it must have this outward manifestation also. Men's souls are dead when they are born: this life is the autopsy, and the disease is made manifest to all. One died mad of pride; one phrenetic with anger; one leprous with sensuality; one had the fever of ambition; one suffered from the insatiable craving of greed; one from the malignant venom of revenge; one from the jaundice of jealousy; one from the eating cancer of envy; one from a surfeit of self-love; one from the paralysis of apathy. Many were the diseases, but death into this world the common result of all.
Yes, death is triumphant here – death, physical and moral. The dead bring forth the dead; the dead bear the dead to the funeral pyre; the dead walk about the streets and greet each other, and bargain, and buy and sell, and marry, and build – and know not all the time that they are but ghosts and phantasms! That land of silence and shadows; of desolation and ruins; of sorrow and death, in which thy soul walked in the vision, Oh Titan! is the world in which thy dead body now walks waking. Renounce and annihilate it, Oh king! by asceticism and divine gnosis, and thus return to real life.
Plutarch’s Yogi
Some Postulates of Theosophy
300
An Outline of the “Secret Doctrine”.
This brings us to the point where the last hour of Universal Night is passing into the dawn of a new Universal Day. All the processes of involution which brought about the Night are ready to be reversed.
We have seen that, at the evening twilight, when Universal Night was coming on, all the souls of men had been drawn together into one humanity, and all the humanities of all the worlds had been drawn together into one great Life – united with each other, and united with the Divine – in the evening twilight that ushered in the Universal Night; the twin powers of Will and Consciousness – the one, creator of all the forms of the universe, all the images and imaginings that make up the worlds – and the other, observer of these manifold images and imaginings – had drawn together, coalesced, and become united, so that the difference between the worlds and the Consciousness that knows the worlds had disappeared, and subject and object had become one.
These unions and involutions marked the evening twilight; they are now to be reversed in the dawn of a new Universal Day. The union of the evening is to become the differentiation of the morning; the involution of the evening is to become the evolution and manifestation of a new day. This differentiation will separate again the united humanities; will separate them from each other, and from the Divine; but this separation is not real, or inherent in essential being, but merely apparent and the result of illusory manifestation.
If we conceive of the totality of being as an infinite diamond, pure and incorruptible, then the differentiated humanities are the faces of the diamond, and the differentiated souls of each humanity are the separate facets of every face. Each facet has, in a sense, an independent being in itself; each facet has a certain individuality and separateness. But each facet only exists through being a part of the diamond; and without the diamond it has no existence at all. Each facet is then merely a phase of the diamond, and not an independent being; and each facet is, as it were, a window into the pure heart of the diamond, an entry to the whole of its incorruptible light; and, being a window to the whole diamond, each facet is thus, in a sense, the whole diamond, and able to command the potency of the whole diamond.
And this is exactly the relation of the differentiated souls to the One Infinite Divine, so far as any symbol can convey that relation. It is only 301 in and through the Divine that these differentiated souls exist at all, as it is only through the diamond that the facets exist at all; and each individual soul is an entry to the ineffable heart of the whole Infinite Divine; and can, through purity, command the whole of its infinite Being and Power. Thus every differentiated soul is at once infinite, as being one with the divine; finite, as being but one facet of the divine; and utterly non-existent and void apart from the divine.
In the perfect diamond there are three powers; first, the entity of the diamond itself; second, the differentiation, or margins of the facets; and thirdly, as the result of these two, the facets themselves. So in the universe, when the dawn comes, and differentiation sets in, there are three powers; first, the Being of the universe; second, the differentiation; and third, through the union of these two, the differentiated souls that enter into separate life. These three powers are, in one sense, the “Father, Mother, and Son” of the Stanzas of Dzyan.
There is yet another aspect of the diamond symbol.
Each facet is not alone, but hemmed in and surrounded by other facets; and thus bound, inevitably and indissolubly, to the other facets; and has, with them, a real existence only through the diamond, to the interior of which, and to the whole of which, each and all of them are equally windows.
So each differentiated soul is not alone, but is surrounded by other souls, and indissolubly bound to them; and has with them no real existence except through the Divine One, of which they are all the facets, and in the plenitude and power of which they all equally partake; the plenary possession of one in nowise excluding or limiting the plenary possession of the others. Each soul is thus bound to other souls in a brotherhood rising out of the depths of essential being, and as eternal and inevitable as essential being itself.
In the same way, each group of facets, each group of souls, is bound to other groups, in divine hosts and hierarchies and powers, all of which exist only through the Divine, and are without the Divine utterly void and non-existent.
At the dawn, therefore, of the Universal Day, differentiation divides the One Divine into innumerable differentiated souls, each possessing the plenary power of the Divine, and bound together into groups, and hierarchies, and hosts, like the clustering facets of the diamond; and yet, though this differentiation into facets takes place, the diamond, the symbol of the Divine, remains one and indivisible as before.
This is the mystery of the relation of the Divine and man, as far as that relation can be embodied in symbols and expressed in words; but symbols are powerless to express the majesty, the infinite fulness and complexity of the great Life, whose only true symbol is life itself.
The first change, therefore, that springs up in the dawn of Universal Day, 302 is the differentiation of the One into hierarchies, humanities, and individual souls, or, to speak more truly, the first change is the birth of the tendency to this differentiation; as the differentiation itself is not completely developed until the noon of Universal Day is reached; at the risk of repetition it must again be pointed out that this differentiation must in nowise be conceived as impairing the eternal unity of the One Divine Life. As we shall note further on, this differentiation, by nature, and in virtue of an inherent essential tendency, is always sevenfold; and that the hierarchies, humanities and souls fall naturally into sevenfold groups, just as the leaves of the horse-chestnut fall naturally, and by an inherent law, into sevenfold groups on each leaf-stem.
The second change that marks the dawn of Universal Day is the reversal of the tendency of Consciousness and the images present to it to coalesce into one united life, which marked, as we saw, the evening twilight of the last Universal Day.
We have traced the relation of Consciousness to the images and imaginings – the images presented outwardly through the senses, and the imaginings presented inwardly through the mind – on the most outward and material planes or phases of life; we have seen that these groups of sensations and feelings, these images and imaginings, follow on this most outward plane a course full of apparent disharmony and chaos, a seemingly cruel and relentless rush of hostile and menacing forces.
Following this relation between consciousness and its objects, through the more inward and less material planes and phases of life, we have seen that, on these higher and deeper planes, subject and object draw closer together, that the deep inherent harmony between them becomes gradually visible, and that at last it becomes plain that the course of these images and imaginings is ruled and directed in disciplinary order by a power inherent in, and indissolubly bound to, Consciousness, the power of spiritual Will, which in the highest, divine phase of life becomes one with Consciousness; this union necessitating the disappearance of the objective universe, or, more truly, its mergence in subjectivity; this disappearance of the objective universe being one of the co-ordinate causes of Universal Night.
At the dawn of a new day, this union is reversed, and the separation of the twin subject-object – the united Will-Consciousness – into subject and object, subjectivity and objectivity, takes place. Here again we have three powers produced from the One; first the subject, Consciousness, the cogniser; second, the object, the images and imaginings cognised; and third, the cognition, the magician Perception, that is produced from these two, and binds these two together; these three are a second aspect of the “Father, Mother, and Son” of the Stanzas of Dzyan.
Again it must be insisted that this separation is not real, not inherent in essential being, but merely apparent and illusory, a part of that gigantic 303 world-illusion which brings about the manifestation of Universal Day; and that this illusory separation in no way impairs the essential unity of the One.
By a law similar to, and co-ordinate with, that which ordained that the hierarchies, and humanities, and souls, should fall into natural groups of sevens, a law which we have likened to the inherent tendency by which the horse-chestnut produces on every leaf-stem branches of seven leaves, it further happens that the separation of subjectivity and objectivity is sevenfold; that subject and object are confronted in seven phases or planes of life, from the highest and deepest phase in which the two are united in one subject-object, one Will-Consciousness, to the lowest, most unreal and most material, in which the vehicle of consciousness and objectivity are in perpetual strife, generating perpetual pain.
This sevenfold manifestation of the twins, Consciousness and Will, or subjectivity and objectivity, through seven phases or planes, is, in one sense, what is meant in the Stanzas of Dzyan by the words: “the radiant essence becomes seven inside (subjectively) and seven outside (objectively)”.
It must not be supposed that this sevenfold manifestation of objectivity, this ranging of images and imaginings into seven categories, phases, or planes, became suddenly complete when the hour struck for the dawn of Universal Day. As we saw was the case with the differentiation of the One Life into hierarchies and humanities and souls, this further separation of the one subject-object into cogniser, cognised, and cognition, and the repetition of this separation through seven phases or planes, is not complete and perfect till the noontide of Universal Day, till the pendulum has reached the foremost point of its swing, and is ready to return again towards and behind the perpendicular.
It is the initiation of the tendency to sevenfold differentiation into subject and object, and not the completion of that tendency, which marks the dawn of Universal Day; and it is this tendency of the One to separate into three – the cogniser, the cognised and the cognition – thus veiling the real unity of the One; and the repetition of this tendency for every unit of being, for every facet of the One Divine Life, which “lifts the veil, and unfurls it from East to West”, in the words of the Book of Dzyan.
In the same Stanza in this book the “Luminous Egg which in itself is three”, is the symbol for each triple group of cogniser, cognised and cognition; such triple group being the cause and basis of manifested life through the corporate powers of subject and object; the “Luminous Egg”, the symbol of these groups, is not one but many, or, more truly, infinite in number; for, to quote the Vishnu Purâna: –
“There are thousands of thousands, and ten thousands of thousands of such world-eggs; nay, hundreds of crores of crores.”
The first element, therefore, of the new dawn of Universal Day is the illusory differentiation of the One Divine Life into apparently 304 separate hierarchies and humanities and souls; while the second element is the fission or division of these hierarchies and humanities and souls into apparently opposed elements of consciousness and will, subjectivity and objectivity. This will is the power that brought into manifestation the ordered chains of illusory images and imaginings that make up the substance of the worlds, which are the objects of the perceptions of the seemingly differentiated though really united consciousnesses, which, though seeming to be many, are really One. As we have seen that the differentiation of the One Life into hierarchies and humanities and souls does not violate the unity of the One Life; but that these hierarchies and humanities and souls are bound together by indissoluble and inevitable bonds, springing from the nature of essential being; we are prepared to understand that the illusory chain of images and imaginings which make up the worlds are not generated by the isolated wills of individual souls without reference to and independent of the humanities and hierarchies to which they belong; but that the illusory chains of images and imaginings are the product of the united wills of the humanities and hierarchies, and that the congeries and series of illusions are welded together into seeming solidity and substantiality by the co-ordinate action of these united wills.
The whole progress of these congeries and series of illusions, from the dawn till the evening twilight of the Universal Day; the quality, quantity, order and character, disciplinary and educational, of these world-images, is the expression, outcome, and manifestation of the inherent nature of the spiritual will linked to each individual soul, to each unit of subject-object, and is thus the expression of the will and inherent law of the humanities and hierarchies to which these units belong; or, to speak more truly, is the expression of the inherent law of that One Divine Life of which the souls, humanities and hierarchies are the facets and faces, the apparent differentiations of the eternally indivisible One.
Besides the apparent differentiation of the One into hierarchies, humanities, and individuals, and the apparent standing apart of these differentiations into the confronted powers of consciousness and nature, of subject and object, there is a third element in the genesis of Universal Day. This third element is the result of the eternal rhythmic tendency to alternate manifestation and latency, which we have seen to be inherent in the One Eternal Divine Life.
About the form of this rhythmic tendency, when in latency, we have seen that it is hardly profitable to enquire; but when in manifestation, its nature and results are more intelligible.
In virtue of this tendency to rhythmic progression, the world-images which are the expression of the will of the One Divine Life, are brought into a continual process of flux and flow, of destruction and regeneration, of waxing and waning, of incessant change from one form and phase to another form and phase.
305 Just as the individual souls are the infinitely numerous facets of the One Divine Life, so these infinitely numerous destructions and regenerations, and incessant changes of form of individual images and world-images, are the facets and reflections of the eternal rhythmic tendency in the One Divine Life, which in this aspect is spoken of as Eternal Motion.
Between the past and the future of every image – the “what-has-been” and the “what-is-to-be” – is intruded for an infinitesimal moment the present, the “what-is”. This fleeting moment in the life of images and world-images, this “present”, the child of past and future, is yet another aspect of the “One which is the Three”; past being the “Father”, future the “Mother”, and present the “Son”, in the phraseology of Dzyan.
These three phases, past, present, and future, are illusory appearances of the Eternal Now; the illusory appearances being generated by the continuous flux and flow of images and world-images under the influence of the eternal rhythmic impulse of the Eternal One Life.
In virtue of this reflected rhythmic impulse, every image and world-image passes through the three phases of beginning, middle, and end, or creation, so-called; preservation; and destruction, which is regeneration or new creation; these three phases being personified as the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer-Regenerator; and the expression of these three in terms of duration being Past, Present, and Future. Every creation was preceded by a destruction, and every destruction will be succeeded by a new creation; or rather, destruction and creation are the dual aspects of the continual transformation to which every image in the illusory, manifested world is incessantly subject; as no illusory image is for more than an infinitesimal moment the same – this infinitesimal moment being the “present”, the son of the limitless past and the limitless future; of the endless transformations that have been, and the endless transformations that are to be.
These transformations vary in the different phases or planes of life in which the dual subject-object expresses itself, from the lowest, or outermost material phase, to the highest and deepest, where all transformations being present in every image at every moment, this re-entrant motion becomes rest – and from another aspect transformation does not take place at all, but is lulled to sleep in the Eternal Now. This is in that deepest and highest phase of life, where Consciousness and image are united in one dual life; and during the long hours of Universal Day this highest phase remains as the type and symbol of the true being of which the manifested universe, the illusory child of the day, is the unreal counterpart. This perfect type will remain until the course of the Universal Day is ended, and the illusion of separateness and the illusion of differentiation have faded away; and individuals, humanities, and hierarchies, lose the sense of their separation, and realise their essential unity with each other and with 306 the Eternal One; till the “Sons return into their Mother’s bosom at the end of the Great Day, and re-become one with Her”, in the language of the Stanzas of Dzyan.
We have thus traced the elements which give birth to the dawn of a new Universal Day, in their triple triplicity; we have traced first the growth of the illusion of difference, by which the differentiated hierarchies, humanities, and individuals, arise as facets and faces of the One Indivisible Life.
We have traced, secondly, the illusion of separation by which the One Being is divided into Consciousness and image, into subject and object, linked together by cognition or perception.
Thirdly, we have seen how the rhythmic impulse of the One Life, becoming reflected in these images, gives birth to incessant transformations, which themselves create the illusions of beginning, middle, and end, as phases of the One Is, and the illusions of past, present, and future, as phases of the One Now.
The next section will trace the progress of the chains and congeries of world-images, thus generated by illusion, and, as illusion; moulded and formed by the hierarchies and humanities whose will has given them birth; and the full development of the powers of the Day.
C. J.
In Confirmation of the “Secret Doctrine”.
The following paragraph has gone the round of the papers, and confirms the contention of H.P.B., on pp. xxxii–iv. of the first volume of the Secret Doctrine: –
The Russians have made a singular discovery in Central Asia (says a correspondent of an Indian newspaper). In Turkestan, on the right bank of the Amou Daria, in a chain of rocky hills near the Bokharan town of Karki, are a number of large caves which, upon examination, were found to lead to an underground city, built, apparently, long before the Christian era. According to effigies, inscriptions, and designs upon the gold and silver money unearthed from among the ruins, the existence of the town dates back to some two centuries before the birth of Christ. The underground Bokharan city is about two versts long, and is composed of an enormous labyrinth of corridors, streets, and squares surrounded by houses and other buildings two or three stories high. The edifices contain all kinds of domestic utensils, pots, urns, vases, and so forth. In some of the streets falls of earth and rock have obstructed the passages, but generally the visitor can walk about freely without so much as lowering his head. The high degree of civilization attained by the inhabitants of the city is shown by the fact that they built in several stories, by the symmetry of the streets and squares, and by the beauty of the baked clay and metal utensils and of the ornaments and coins which have been found. It is supposed that long centuries ago this city so carefully concealed in the bowels of the earth provided an entire population with a refuge from the incursions of nomadic savages and robbers.
Karma and Reincarnation
313
Wherever men are gathered, all the air |
| The City of Dreadful Night. – Thomson. |
The Seven Principles of Man
321
Theosophy
The human mind has always been inquiring about the source of all things, of life and of the idea of God. And the generality of men, being unable to look beyond the ken of the mortal eye, try to explain away such difficult problems by the conclusions to which their sensuous experience leads them. Schools of such matter-of-fact philosophers are as old as the days of the famous Indian Atheist Charvaka. The arguments of this master of Atheism are so very plain and convincing that the recital of his telling maxims is likely to make the most serious metaphysician totter on the firm footing of his supersensuous speculations. Atheists of this sort are part and parcel of the general crop of humanity and, it is no new discovery nor wonder if we find their ideas uttered and echoed and re-echoed with force and conviction. No astounding discovery is it then that at the present phase of philosophical speculation, there should arise a mighty force of opposite tendency to check the safe advance of the former and positively threaten to put it out of countenance. Now this same Atheism may appear under different names at different times, and its present name is so-called “materialism”. That the term is even in the present case a misnomer will be explained further on. In the first place I will state what this materialism is intended to mean. Its accepted definition is that it is the doctrine that “the soul of man and even all existence and consciousness is but the result of the matter of which the body is composed”. Such a definition explaining away the theory of existence and consciousness puts an end to all troubles of investigation and, had it been believed and accepted, the world would have invented telegraphy and the steam engine long before civilization began to dawn on the West. That it was not, that it could not be believed or accepted is patent enough. And why has it not been believed? Is this theory insufficient or untrue? Let us see whether the other side has proved it to be so. It is needless to say that the other side is that of metaphysicians and theologians. Contemporaneous with the rise of materialism has been the rise of metaphysical philosophy and theology. Dreadful wars have been waged that have disturbed harmony and peace on this earth, and yet the issue is expected by each party to be favourable to itself. If the metaphysicians conquer in the end, we may expect the world ere long to return to that glory of which we read in the history of Vedic India. If this party conquers we have one clear instance of ancient India to conceive and describe its limits. But if the other party conquers, however we may tax our imagination, there is no knowing what results it may achieve, or what it will ultimately end in, if not, as is most probable, in smoke. An invention of to-day may make another of yesterday null and void, to be in its own turn nullified by an invention of to-morrow. Electric force has begun to supersede steam power. Electricity in its turn will have to hand over its glory to some possibly stronger power. The most destructive engine of to-day may be made obsolete by a new defensive armour to-morrow. Science may invent an invulnerable armour, and prove the huge mass of its own machinery to be merely children’s toys, only too huge for their use. These are in my humble opinion the highest possibilities of materialistic science, popular at the present day. But that the very pursuit of materialistic 322 science, if candidly continued, will ultimately lead to metaphysical experiments and end in the same conclusions that form but the starting points of real philosophy, will be plain when we remember the theory of Evolution and know that a fixed limit to Evolution is an unthinkable idea. Admitting therefore the greater importance of metaphysical philosophy, let us now explore the fields where this philosophy has been studied and considered. In its relation to the enquiry about creation and to the prime source of all things it includes the groundwork of all theological systems, and everyone who has surmounted the rude barrier of crass materialism must think that higher philosophy a worthy subject of study. And accordingly the greatest minds of all nations will very soon discover the Ultima Thule of physical inquiry and turn their thoughts to their “proper study.” Now each thinks in his own way and according to his own place, time and surrounding circumstances, and finding followers promulgates his own doctrine and establishes a school of philosophy. That such schools very often widely differ is a fact, but in one or two things all of them must meet, and these are the original unity of all creation, the omnipotence of an original power and the like. Most thinkers of a modest nature are satisfied by achieving an inferior result, think at a certain stage they have reached the final goal, and limit their enquiry because beyond this a spirit of enquiry might appear unnecessary and inopportune. Such are theologians in general. Those that believe in a personal God revere their God too highly and ecstatically to think of going beyond him; and their speculation ends in perpetual contemplation of the goal they have reached. But there are others with whom there is no such thing as a personal God, who look upon emancipation of a particular kind as the ultimate end to be sought after. With these the spirit of enquiry enters into eternity and ends with having known all that has to be known, and their existence in it is absolute, full of joy and knowledge. Now let me ask you whether you think there is any cause for quarrel between the two classes of men just described. There is none; and, no cause, no effect. Read the views of the author of the Dabistan on the Sadhus or Saints of 12 different religions. They neither quarrel nor abuse; but look upon one another as children of the same mother Nature, and love rather than hate one another, as true Brothers. But the followers being half-wise commence the struggle and only bring about mutual destruction. It is on the common groundwork of all religions that Theosophy takes its stand and from thence it lights the path for all those that try through the mazes of ignorance and superstition to approach it and make it more known.
Now what is the line of investigation of these metaphysical enquirers? Not being satisfied with the limited knowledge afforded by the physical senses, having their curiosity aroused by occurrences beyond the pale of the ordinary phenomena in nature, trying to find out something that would account for the difference among beings, feeling inwardly the consciousness that they are not masters of themselves, but merely machine-like entities worked by some hidden power, these enquirers have pushed on their investigations to detect facts which might lead to a knowledge of the above things. All religions have been searched and researched, all facts observed and noted down: all nooks and corners of the world having been explored, they have come to these important conclusions: That there exists an invisible world side by side with the visible one; that man can communicate with that world under certain conditions; that matter exists in forms yet unknown to science and that the ultimate evolution of matter into spirit is a law of nature; that there are no supernatural phenomena and no God to be feared, and if any be conceived he is only to be loved.
Then what constitutes pain and sorrow? What leads to differences? Why should one man sit in the palanquin and others bear his weight on their shoulders? The absolutely original cause of these differences, as well as 323 their material importance, are questions which we shall for a while place aside. Let us only observe the working of the differences by the actual state of things around us. We see justice necessary for the continuance of the world. From the idea of Justice follows the freedom of every individual as a necessary corrollary; and supposing all human existence is limited to the material encasement, will it satisfy us to see all differences cease and sorrows end with the end of this encasement; to see that the felon is laid down in as quiet a grave as the most virtuous man? Evidently not, if we are to judge with reason. What then governs destiny, accounts for differences and “reconciles man” to his lot? It is the law of Karma. All effects must have causes and all causes, effects. What is done or thought at any time must beget a corresponding result in some future time. And what sins we find exempted from punishment and what virtues deprived of their reward by the levelling hand of death find their proper retribution in another incarnation. Thus comes in the doctrine of Re-incarnation. And what else can possibly account for the unjust suffering and unmerited happiness we daily meet with in the world around us? The doctrine of Re-incarnation naturally involves the assumption of immortality. That life exists after so-called death has been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. But the soul that survives the physical encasement is not freed from it in the way we are apt to imagine. There is a hyperphysical existence or an existence in transcendental materiality if you please. Proofs of such existence are abundantly on record, and as the grossest of such may be pointed out the phenomena of spiritualism. Clairvoyance, Psychometry and the like show the physical body to be only the clay-house of an owner that can enter and leave it at pleasure; and if he appears confined to it, it is his own fault.
Such in short are the beliefs of Theosophy. It is a science as true as, if not more true than, any one of our positive sciences. And its superiority to the positive sciences lies in this, that with Theosophy there is no such thing as the unknowable and its definition of nature includes a greater arena than that to which the other sciences have limited the term. Its proofs are within the reach of every one as rightfully as those of the other sciences, and no more qualifications are necessary for its student than such as are necessary for the proper handling of the subject to be learnt and of the objects to be experimented upon. The definition of matter assumed by science popularly known is an insufficient one. The leaders of scientific thought have arrived at a conclusion that matter is a thing that cannot be understood; that the definition attached to it does not describe it properly. There are states of matter beyond the solid liquid and gaseous and these states material sciences do not know. It is from an ignorance of the very thing to be understood by “matter” that “materialism” has been assumed as the title of positive science popularly known. Materialism is a misnomer as I have already said. Theosophy is an experimental science and it wants its students to have certain psychic and mental aptitudes. There are numberless people possessing these, but the basis of the study being perfect and continued concentration, and such concentration involving a degree of patient study and enormous mental exertion, they are apt to be inert. Physical objects can be handled more easily than the objects of the mind, the physical eye can be more easily concentrated on physical objects than the mental eye on mental things. Hence the continued habit of passiveness on the subjective side and activity on the objective one makes the inner power more and more dormant, and man at once flies to the conviction that the existence of such powers in himself is a myth. The weapon that rusts will no longer serve its purpose; exactly so the powers that lie unused will grow inefficacious. If we do not evince them it is because for a series of lives we have left off the exercise of our latent powers as an idle business and have made our joys and sorrows 324 entirely dependent upon the objective world – the world that concerns the five senses only.
An enquiry into the existence beyond, before, and contemporaneously with the present condition ought to be taken up and pursued on strictly reasonable grounds. This is the aim of Theosophy, and as such it neither injures any class of men nor hinders the progress of humanity. On the contrary, it raises the ideal of religion, encourages its votaries to live up to its ideal and, by tempering prejudice and expanding the province of love, makes humanity more affectionately tied together in a bond of close fraternity. If you are a Christian it will show you what constitutes the essence of your religion, if you are a Hindu it will show you that you have entirely been in the dark as to what your religion is. But I leave it to you to judge, concluding with the observations that Theosophy is no sect formed for only part of humanity, it does not say “thus far and no further” to the humble and honest enquirer, and it has no need of making proselytes. The best men of all religions are its members, as it concerns itself only with the foundations of all religions and proves them indubitably to be one in their essence and to be different, where they are so, only through the accident of external environments.
P. N. Patankar, B.A.
Poona.
The Effects of Indian Hemp.
In our October issue we quoted from the Hospital Gazette an account of the experiences of an Indian hemp chewer. From the same paper we take the following statement by Dr. H. C. Wood, of Philadelphia: –
“About half-past four p.m., September 23rd, I took most of the extract. No immediate symptoms were produced. About seven p.m. a professional call was requested, and forgetting all about the hemp, I went out and saw my patient. Whilst writing the prescription, I became perfectly oblivious to surrounding objects, but went on writing, without any check to or deviation from the ordinary series of mental acts connected with the process, at least that I am aware of. When the recipe was finished, I suddenly recollected where I was, and, looking up, saw my patient sitting quietly before me. The conviction was irresistible that I had sat thus many minutes, perhaps hours, and directly the idea fastened itself that the hemp had commenced to act, and had thrown me into a trance-like state of considerable duration, during which I had been stupidly sitting before my wondering patient. I hastily arose and apologized for remaining so long, but was assured I had only been a very few minutes. About seven and a half p.m. I returned home. I was by this time quite excited, and the feeling of hilarity now rapidly increased. It was not a sensuous feeling in the ordinary meaning of the term; it was not merely an intellectual excitation; it was a sort of bien-être, the very opposite to malaise. It did not come from without; it was not connected with any passion or sense. It was simply a feeling of inner joyousness; the heart seemed buoyant beyond all trouble; the whole system felt as though all sense of fatigue were for ever banished; the mind gladly ran riot, free constantly to leap from one idea to another, apparently unbound from its ordinary laws. I was disposed to laugh; to make comic gestures; one very frequently recurrent fancy was to imitate with the arms the motions of a fiddler, and with the lips the tune he was supposed to be playing. There was nothing like wild delirium, nor any hallucinations that I remember. At no time had I any visions, or at least any that I can now call to mind; but a person who was with me at that time states that I once raised my head and exclaimed, ‘Oh, the mountains! the mountains!’ Whilst I was performing the various antics already alluded to, I knew very well I was acting exceedingly foolishly, but could not control myself. I think it was about eight o’clock when I began to have a feeling of numbness in my limbs, also a sense of general uneasiness and unrest, and a fear lest I had taken an overdose. I now constantly walked about the house; my skin to myself was warm, in fact my whole surface felt flushed; my mouth and throat were very dry; my legs put on a strange, foreign feeling, as though they were not a part of my body. I counted my pulse and found it one hundred and twenty, quite full and strong. A foreboding, an undefined, horrible fear, as of impending death, now commenced to creep over me; in haste I sent for medical aid. The curious sensations in my limbs increased. My legs felt as though they were
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waxen pillars beneath me. I remember feeling them with my hand and finding them, as I thought at least, very firm, the muscles all in a state of tonic contraction. About eight o'clock I began to have marked ‘spells’ – periods when all connection seemed to be severed between the external world and myself. I might be said to have been unconscious during these times, in so far that I was oblivious to all external objects, but on coming out of one, it was not a blank, dreamless void upon which I looked back, a mere empty space, but rather a period of active but aimless life. I do not think there was any connected thought in them; they seemed simply wild reveries, without any binding cord, each a mere chaos of disjointed ideas. The mind seemed freed from all its ordinary laws of association, so that it passed from idea to idea, as it were, perfectly at random. The duration of these spells to me was very great, although they really lasted but from a few seconds to a minute or two. Indeed, I now entirely lose my power of measuring time. Seconds seemed hours; minutes seemed days; hours seemed infinite. Still I was perfectly conscious during the intermissions between the paroxysms. I would look at my watch, and then after an hour or two, as I thought, would look again and find that scarcely five minutes had elapsed. I would gaze at its face in deep disgust, the minute-hand seemingly motionless, as though graven in the face itself; the laggard second-hand moving slowly, so slowly. It appeared a hopeless task to watch during its whole infinite round of a minute, and always would I give up in despair before the sixty seconds had elapsed. Occasionally when my mind was most lucid, there was in it a sort of duplex action in regard to the duration of time. I would think to myself, It has been so long since a certain event – an hour, for example, since the doctor came; and then reason would say, No, it has been only a few minutes; your thoughts or feelings are caused by the hemp. Nevertheless, I was not able to shake off this sense of the most indefinite prolongation of time, even for a minute. The paroxysms already alluded to were not accompanied with muscular relaxation. About a quarter before nine o’clock, I was standing at the door, anxiously watching for the doctor, and when the spells would come on I would remain standing, leaning slightly, perhaps, against the doorway. After awhile I saw a man approaching, whom I took to be the doctor. The sounds of his steps told me he was walking very rapidly, and he was under a gas-lamp, not more than one-fourth of a square distant, yet he appeared a vast distance away, and a corresponding time approaching. This was the only occasion in which I noticed an exaggeration of distance; in the room it was not perceptible. My extremities now began to grow cold, and I went into the house. I do not remember further, until I was aroused by the doctor shaking or calling me. Then intellection seemed pretty good. There was at this time a very marked sense of numbness in my limbs, and what the doctor said was a hard pinch, produced no pain. When I attempted to walk upstairs, my legs seemed as though their lower halves were made of lead. After this there were no new symptoms, only an intensifying of those already mentioned. The periods of unconsciousness became at once longer and more frequent, and during their absence intellection was more imperfect, although when thoroughly roused I thought I reasoned and judged clearly. The oppressive feeling of impending death became more intense. It was horrible. Each paroxysm would seem to have been the longest I had suffered; as I came out of it, a voice seemed constantly saying, ‘You are getting worse; your paroxysms are growing longer and deeper; they will overmaster you; you will die’. A sense of personal antagonism between my will-power and myself, as affected by the drug, grew very strong. I felt as though my only chance was to struggle against these paroxysms – that I must constantly arouse myself by an effort of will; and that effort was made with infinite toil and pain. I felt as if some evil spirit had control of the whole of me except the will power, and was in determined conflict with that, the last citadel of my being. I have never experienced anything like the fearful sense of almost hopeless anguish and utter weariness which was upon me. Once or twice during a paroxysm I had what might be called night-mare sensations; I felt myself mounting upwards, expanding, dilating, dissolving into the wide confines of space, overwhelmed by a horrible, rending, unutterable despair. Then with tremendous effort, I seemed to shake this off, and to start up with the shuddering thought, Next time you will not be able to throw this off, and what then? About midnight, at the suggestion of the doctors, I went upstairs to bed. My legs and feet seemed so heavy I could scarcely move them, and it was as much as I could do to walk with help. I have no recollection whatever of being undressed, but am told I went immediately to sleep. When I awoke, early in the morning, my mind was at first clear, but in a few minutes the paroxysms, similar to those of the evening, came on again, and recurred at more or less brief intervals until late in the afternoon. All of the day there was marked anæsthesia of the skin.”
The Septenary in Nature
331
Guesses at Truth.
Fohat is “the key in Occultism which opens and unriddles the multiform symbols and respective allegories in the mythology of every nation.” (S.D. I., 673.)
He, therefore, who can master the mystery of Fohat should be able to understand some of the secrets of Occultism, consequently, study of this subject promises to be profitable, and this is what we are told about it.
Fohat is anterior to Kosmos (S.D. I., 109). He is the son of Ether, the light of sound (S.D. II., 400). The constructive force of Cosmic Electricity. He sprang from Brahmâ from the brain of the father and the bosom of the mother, and then metamorphosed himself into a male and female, i.e., polarity, into positive and negative Electricity. (S.D. I., 145.)
Fohat is one thing in the yet unmanifested Universe (Kosmos) and another in the phenomenal world (Cosmos). In the unmanifested Universe, Fohat is an abstract philosophical idea. As yet, he produces nothing by himself: he is simply that potential creative power in virtue of whose action the Noumenon of all future Phenomena divides, but to reunite in a mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative Ray.
In Cosmos, Fohat is the Occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first impulse which, in time, becomes law. When the “Divine Son” breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active power which causes the One to become Two, and Three, on the cosmic plane of manifestation. (S.D. I., 109.)
Madame Blavatsky says in discussing occult matters, “always argue on analogy and apply the old occult axiom ‘As above, so below’.” (B.L. Trans., II., 21.) Let us do so.
332 On our own plane we know that Unity is sterile and it is only by the marriage of two correspondent Forces that fertility is obtained.
That being so, by analogy, there must be an equivalent conjunction on every plane, whether it be below or above our own.
When, therefore, we are taught to regard Fohat as an “Idea” on the kosmic plane, we instinctively require an active mate by whom this passive “Potentiality” can be fructified, before we can admit the possibility of any manifestation of its Being.
Now an Idea is a “necessary truth” (Râja Yoga, 13), and on our plane it can only be fructified by “Thought”; consequently by applying our universal rule, we infer that Potential Idea is married to Potential Thought on the kosmic plane, and from that union springs the Ray which manifests as Cosmos.
Of course beyond all this is the Potential Thinker in whose potential brain both Idea and Thought evolve. This Being is termed Sat, Parabrahma, etc., the Unknowable, the Unconditioned, about which the Masters tell us it is useless to speculate.
In Theosophy, therefore, as in Christianity, we have to begin with the first manifestation of Being that is cognisable by us. This Being is called the Third Logos. “This Logos, we are told, being no personality but the universal Principle, is represented by all the divine powers born of its mind.” (S.D. II., 308).
Now Fohat is the Shakti (Force) of the Divine Mind (B.L. Trans., II., p. 5) i.e., “Sat is the Potentiality of Being, Fohat the Potency of Being.” (Ibid. 6). This we may translate as Passive and Active Divinity. It corresponds with Matter-Spirit; Negative-Positive; Female-Male, etc., a duality being always present, as the necessity of evolution, while the point of emanation completes the Trinity on every plane.
“All the Forces, Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., etc., are called the Gods – esoterically. Therefore the personification of Fohat, synthesizing all the manifested Forces in Nature, is a legitimate result.”
“In India Fohat is the scientific aspect of both Vishnu and Indra. In Egypt, Fohat is called Toum. He issued from Noot [the Celestial Abyss (S.D. I., 228), Space or Sky (S.D. I., 353.) ], and is spoken of as the Protean God who generates other Gods and gives himself the form he likes. He creates Spirits and gives them shape and life. He is the North Wind and the Spirit of the West Wind, and finally the setting Sun of Life or the vital electric Force that leaves the body at death.”
It seems then pretty clear that under the veil of fanciful personification by which Occultists adapted their knowledge to common capacities, the ever-burning light of scientific deduction made Nature's profoundest secrets patent to the Initiated, and enabled them to discern, beyond all, the mighty mystery of Absoluteness, before which the highest Intellects must ever bow in reverential awe.
“When an Occultist speaks of ‘Fohat’ he means the energising and guiding Intelligence in the Electric or vital Fluid. He sees in the manifestation of every Force in Nature the action of the special characteristic of its Noumenon, and he regards that Noumenon as a distinct and intelligent Individuality, on the other side of the manifested mechanical Universe. At the same time he admits that Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., are affections (not properties or qualities) of Matter, i.e., Matter is the condition – necessary basis or vehicle – for the manifestation of these forces, or Agents, on this plane.”
Passivity and Activity can be conceived as eternally co-existent, potentially: but Matter must exist before it can be affected, i.e., Matter can logically exist without its affections, but the affections of Matter are inconceivable without Matter. Still that which affects Matter may have 333 existed potentially, before the conditions were evolved under which it became potent. That it does so exist is an axiom of Theosophy.
Matter being a thing of sense, and therefore finite, we are constrained to seek its cause in the Infinite. This brings us to the vital Essence by which all things are. Occultism teaches us that “this Essence Jivatma pervades every atom and is guided and energised by Intelligence” (B.L. Trans., II., 19). But still beyond this Essence we perceive Divine Thought ensouled by Divine Idea.
If then we regard Divine Idea as passive, or Sat, and Divine Idea as active, or Fohat, we get a complete and orderly sequence, which is, possibly, not far from the Occult meanings, for we read, “gross ponderable Matter is the body, the shell of Substance, the female passive Principle: Fohatic force is the second principle, Prana – the male – the Active. On our globe this substance is earth, the second principle of the Septenary Element. In the atmosphere it is that of air, which is the cosmic gross body. In the sun it becomes the Solar body and that of the seven Rays. In Sidereal Space it corresponds with another principle, and so on. The whole is homogeneous Unity, the parts are differentiations.” (S.D. I., 525.)
“It is the original, primordial ‘prima materia’, divine and intelligent, the direct latent emanation of the Universal Mind – the Daiviprakriti, or divine light, emanating from the Logos – called Fohat by Occultists – which formed the nuclei of all the self-moving Orbs in Cosmos. It is the active, informing, ever-present, moving power and life principle, the vital soul of the suns, moons, planets and even of our earth. This is the invisible Ruler and Guide of the gross body attached to and connected with its Soul, which Soul is the Spiritual emanation of these respective Spirits.”
“Fohat is the entire collective energy of the Dhyan Chohans (Arch-angels) on the Objective plane: the Manasaputras representing them on the Subjective plane.”
All this of course is allegorical and really means that “Fohat is the dynamic energy of cosmic ideation, the link between mind and matter.” (S.D. I., 16.)
But in another aspect Fohat is called the “Thread of primeval Light”, and we are told this thread runs through the seven planes (of being), tying itself into knots, every plane being septenary. There are thus forty-nine mystical and physical forces, larger knots forming suns, stars, and systems, the smaller knots becoming planets and so on. (B.L. Trans., II., 27.)
The same idea is applied to man in “The Seven Strides of Fohat.” Five of these represent the upper planes of consciousness and two the astral and terrestrial planes. (S.D. I., 122.) Thus they embrace “the seven spheres inhabited by man” (S.D. I., 113), man here meaning “not the physical form, but the Divine Monad.” (S.D. II., 635.)
As regards the modus operandi on the physical plane we read “Surya [the central Spiritual Sun, of which our sun is a reflection (S.D. I., 100)] causes Fohat to collect primordial dust, in the form of balls, impels these to move in converging lines, and finally causes them to approach each other and aggregate.” (S.D. I., 201.)
“All the so-called Forces of nature, Electricity, Magnetism, Light, Heat, etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, are in their ultimate constitution the differentiated aspects of Universal Motion [the Great Breath, the one absolute attribute of Parabrahm, the One Life, the Absolute. (S.D. I., 182.)]. When Fohat is said to produce seven Laya centres it means that for formative purposes the Great Law (God) modifies its perpetual motion on seven invisible points within the area of the manifested Universe.”
“Laya” is what may be called the zero-point, the realm of absolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force. (S.D. I., 148.)
334 Here we touch one of the most abstruse axioms of Occultism. The “Absolute” has to be conceived as nothing and yet everything. As no Being and yet every Being. The idea seems to be this. Essential Life is an unbounded Unity. Individual Life is a differentiation of this Unity limited by its object. This object is the accentuation of some special potentiality that is, essentially, in the Absolute. This potentiality is a subjective state, but having a modified motion, it becomes a force manifested by its specialities to other forces, which are egoistic on the objective plane, but altruistic on the subjective plane. Consequently, being essentially correlated, there is harmony in their diversity, and finite non-Unities are synthesized in the Infinite Unity of All.
Thus Fohat is said to have seven sons. These are Motion, Sound, Heat, Light, Cohesion, Electricity, and Nerve Force. (S.D. I., 204-216.)
Each of these is “That” which enables us to think of it apart, therefore, to us, it is an Entity. The Hindus deified these forces and assigned a goddess or female aspect to each of them, so that, being dual, all might be prolific. We, being less imaginative, may be content with names which connote their several efficiencies. What concerns us at present is that they are all aspects of one Entity, in and by whom they have their being.
But “each world has its Fohat, who is omnipresent in his own sphere of action. There are as many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of manifestations. The individual Fohats make one collective Fohat – the aspect-Entity of the one absolute Non-Entity, which is absolute Be-ness, Sat. Billions of worlds are produced at every Manvantara, therefore there must be many Fohats; these we consider as conscious and intelligent forces.” (S.D. I., 143. Note.)
This seems comprehensive enough, but when we remember that, in Occultism, the term world does not mean our earth but a solar system (S.D. II., 616), we are fairly bewildered by the magnitude of the conception. But the Hindus are always consistent; consequently, having assumed the infinitely great, there must be the infinitely small to complete the duality. This is personified as Aniyâmsam, the most atomic of the atomic. (S.D. I., 542.) It is one of the names of Brahmâ.
The universality of Fohat is thus spoken of.
“In reality there is one Force, which, on the manifested plane, appears to us in billions of forms. All proceeds from one universal Fire, and, on our plane, electricity is one of the most comprehensive aspects of this Fire. All contains, and is, electricity, from the nettle which stings to the lightning which kills, from the spark in the pebble to the blood in the body. But the electricity which is seen, for instance, in the electric lamp, is quite another thing from Fohat.”
What this difference is, H.P.B. does not explain, and it is not easy to discover. She continues:
“Electricity is the cause of the molecular motion in the universe, and hence also here, on earth. It is one of the principles of Matter; for generated as it is in every disturbance of equilibrium, it becomes the Kamic [instinctive, (S.D. II., 255)] element of the object in which the disturbance takes place. Thus Fohat, the primeval cause of this force, in its billions of aspects, and as the sum total of universal cosmic electricity, is an Entity.”
H. P. B. further explains:
“Speaking of the sun we may call it an Entity, but we should hardly call a sunbeam, which dazzles our eyes, an Entity. The ‘sons of Fohat’ are the various forces having Fohatic, or Cosmic electric life in their Being and in their various effects. For example, rub amber – a Fohatic Entity – and it will give birth to a ‘son’ who will attract straws; an apparently inanimate and inorganic object thus manifesting life! But rub a nettle between your thumb and finger and you will also generate a ‘son of Fohat’ in the shape of a blister. In these cases, the blister is an Entity, but the attraction which draws the straw is hardly one.”
335 Continuing her instruction Madame Blavatsky says:
“Electricity is the work of Fohat, but Fohat is not electricity. From an occult standpoint electric phenomena are very often produced by the abnormal state of the molecules of an object or of bodies in space; electricity is life and it is death; the first being produced by harmony, the second by disharmony. Vital electricity is under the same laws as cosmic electricity. The combination of molecules into new forms and the bringing about of new correlations and the disturbance of molecular equilibrium is, in general, the work of, and generates, Fohat.”
This seems a little to confuse Fohat with the sons and still more remote progeny of Fohat. But the Fohatic principle is ever the same, and may be regarded as one whatever agent may be employed in its manifestation.
And now from the evidence that has been adduced, I think we may fairly conclude that, according to Occult teaching, Fohat is a primordial force whose secondaries or aspects are Motion, Sound, Heat, etc. Motion (the one attribute of the Absolute) being the synthesis of the Septenate.
The only question that remains concerns the nature of this primordial force.
In the small glossary, published by Mrs. Besant and Herbert Burrows, Fohat is defined as “the creative potency of Kosmic Thought, manifesting on all planes”. This may be accepted as conclusive, as it fully meets all the requirements of the case. We have, first, Divine Consciousness in which ideas are. Then these ideas are evolved by Kosmic Thought, and the formative potency of cogitation, or Fohat, evolves all the phenomena which manifest aspects of the Absolute. This accounts for all that is within the scope of my apprehension. Others of greater capacity will probably require fuller knowledge and will carry their conceptions to a higher plane. When they do so I shall rejoice in their success and be grateful for their instruction.
Correspondence.
The True Church of Christ
336 [The readers of Lucifer to whom Mr. Brodie Innes’ article and my reply are addressed can now decide for themselves the merits of the case. I simply take up my pen again to assure Mr. Brodie Innes that I shall always endeavour to apply the same methods of historical criticism to the Gnostics as I apply to the Church Fathers, or any other body of religionists. Why should I not? The Gnôsis, however – call it by what name you will – is independent of its expositors, for it is neither Gnosticism nor Christianity, nor Brahminism, nor Buddhism, nor any other exoteric exposition. Gnosticism is one of the exoteric expositions of the Gnosis, and the difficulty in dealing with the historical side of it is that our information comes mostly from the Church Fathers. As well apply for an estimate of the character and a statement of the teaching of H.P.B. to the S.P.R. report, or the libellous columns of the New York Sun, as to the Fathers for a right estimate of the life and character, and a correct statement of the teaching of the heretics.
G. R. S. M.]
The Instability of the “Word”.
In calling attention to the “Instability of the ‘Word’”, Dr. Pratt has touched on a subject which seems to me to require further notice. His paper in Lucifer of October 15th is a chapter in a book that has yet to be written in its entirety – a Novum Organum or New Logic of Religious Science. And if any of the learned Orientalists who contribute to Lucifer would treat compendiously of the Nayaya system of Indian Logic, it would be another welcome step in the same direction. Again and again in the writings of Theosophists I seem to recognise the enthymeme-syllogism of that system, and we are warned by a Christian writer on the subject of the impossibility of attempting to comprehend Indian Philosophy by means of the logical methods of Aristotle and Bacon (Hindu Philosophy, by Ram Chandra Bose, A.M., Funk and Wagnalls, 1884, page 198).
But Dr. Pratt’s subject will suffice for the present. The shifting interpretations of ancient terms are only too obvious, and though it is perhaps impossible to build a Tower of Babel that will last for all time, I might
337
point out that ordinary material science has very nearly succeeded where Nimrod failed. There are definite names for definite things, authoritatively though arbitrarily imposed, which are recognised throughout the world of Western science. Such is notably the case in the domain of Natural History, in which every plant and animal is generically and specifically named and described.
Nor in the matter of religious terminology need there be any greater difficulties than those which Natural History has surmounted, even though the things dealt with cannot be collected and packed in a museum. If we can be content with Nominalism, if we can allow that no definition does more than declare the meaning of the word (see Mill’s Logic), and if we can agree that whenever the constituted and recognised authority has assigned a word as the name of a thing or concept, that word shall be used in no other meaning, we avoid all sorts of mere logomachies, and can speak and write without fear of misunderstandings. For instance, your learned Foundress in introducing concepts new to Western thought has indicated them by words drawn (very naturally) from the Sanskrit; and I, in my logical capacity, whether I believe her doctrines or not, must use those words in her sense and in no other.
I need not further digress on the subject of scientific nomenclature, but as the time has come when it will be necessary to meet Theosophical doctrines in sharp dialectic encounter, some agreement of the nature of a cartel will have to be arrived at with regard to terms, as well Theosophical as Theological or Scientific. And there are other points which will have to be included. It would be most grievous and deplorable if disputes about words and forms of thought obscured the discussion of grave matters of eternal truth, which should only be approached in a spirit of modest chivalry and deferential courtesy.
I enclose my card with address, but as the matter is quite impersonal perhaps you will permit me to be, if indeed I be, simply
Reviews.
The Mystic Quest.[9]
The Mystic Quest is one of the many attempts made by authors of the present day to take romance into the domain of Theosophy. This endeavour has never yet been crowned with success, and interesting as the volume before us is, yet, on laying it down, we cannot help wishing that the writer had given us all Theosophy or purely romance. The two very forcible chapters on “Evolution” and “The Quest Disclosed” are so interesting and clearly worked out, from the Theosophical standpoint, that the reader cannot but regret he is obliged to pick up once more the thread of romance which runs through the book; it jars somewhat upon the harmony of a closely argued Theosophical disquisition.
Again, the wonderful and sudden recollection of a previous incarnation, complete in all its details, savours more of an Adept’s recollection than that of a man of the world just hearing the first sounds of Theosophy. It is slightly improbable, even within the almost unlimited bounds of fiction, and being so, might lead those unfamiliar with Theosophical ideas, which are admirably treated, to class the really sound teaching of the book in the same category.
We would recommend every Theosophist to read, with close attention, 338 the chapter entitled “The Mystic M.S.”. It is the keynote of Occult teaching, and strikes full and loud. It epitomises the foundation necessary for the life of an Occultist, and too much attention cannot be given to the teaching.
The chapter on “Science and Religion” is also very clearly written; dealing with these two “antagonists” in a moderate and fair-minded way, pointing out the futility of such endless controversy, when each is required in its own place to supplement the other.
If Mr. Kingsland’s book induces some minds to take up this unbiassed position, it will have taught a valuable lesson.
The romance gives us some very interesting passages, notably the chapter “Alcides and Menas,” in which the author lifts the veil that hides the previous incarnations of the two present-day heroes; it is well and dramatically told, giving the reader an interesting, though too short, sketch of life in ancient Thessaly.
Alcides and Menas are already pledged to the “Mystic Quest”, and the author gives us hints of a “Brotherhood,” but does no more, we could wish that this chapter and the one following, “Sixteen Thousand Years Ago”, had been more extended, so deeply interesting are the points with which it deals. Well-known to many of us are the chords here struck, and Tlhytus the sage seems strangely familiar; his parting injunctions to his three pupils deserve close attention.
The tragedy which so suddenly ends the life of Menas is too abrupt. Our complaint against the writer is that he does not give us enough information about the two individuals he has created before our mind’s eye, and just as we are deeply interested in “Sixteen Thousand Years Ago”, the author waves his pen and wafts us back to the nineteenth century, with our curiosity all unsatisfied.
The book is charmingly got up, both within and without; the sketch on the cover is by our well known and artistic friend Mr. R. Machell, who possesses a real power of bringing before the imagination a weird and beautiful scene with a few strokes of his pen or pencil. This picture depicts a deep glowing sunset, purple waters, and shadowy gray-green hills, and the two figures are thrown into strong relief by the setting sun. There is a sadness and desolation about the scene which well typifies the solitariness of the Occultist’s life.
The volume will well repay the reader who wishes to gain a general outline of mystic ideas, but everyone will regret that it closes so soon.
I. C. O.
Existence, as Pleasure, Pain, and Love.
The author of this book (Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden) explains that the word pleasure (German, Lust) is not to be taken in the ordinary sense, but rather as meaning that joy, delight, desire, which is at the basis of all life, and is at once its cause, its effect, and its justification. He wishes it to stand for the idea of “thirst for life”, with a view to development and progress, as expressed by the Meister Eckehart in the fourteenth century, and further developed by Leibnitz, Kant, Lessing, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and others; and, as he explains at some length, it is most fully taught in the Hindu systems of philosophy.
The object of his work, the author tells us, is to set forth the doctrine of the persistence of the Individuality and the consequent necessity for Reincarnation, and to reconcile this teaching with the so-called Darwinian evolution.
339 To the latter he gives the name of mechanical, to the former causal-dynamic or mathematical evolution, and endeavours to prove that the one cannot exist without the other, and that only in this region of study can the answer to the cause of existence and the problems of life and death be found. Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden frankly owns that the same teaching is to be found in many large and cumbrous volumes, but because art is long and time is short, he has condensed it within a single work of 140 pages, illustrated by diagrams and enriched with a copious index; he has moreover considerately placed the chief points in small paragraphs of large print, and the elucidating matter in longer paragraphs of small print, so that none but a fainéant need complain of lack of time or opportunity to study the subject.
Starting with the axiom of Individual Monism, i.e., that all beings are parts of the One Life, and are themselves built up of countless other lives, as now pretty widely accepted by science, the author proceeds to point out in what respect this scientific monism fails to apprehend the true meaning of Individuality. Man is, according to physical science, a congeries of molecules and cells following a certain development, from the single cell and the single molecule, or rather atom, upwards; but what is the binding force, what the constraining power which unites, directs, and limits their action and interaction? What is the true being (Wesenheit) in man? These questions science has never answered; it may speak of single beings (bodily forms) as individuals; it has never grasped the idea (quite a different one) of individuality. “Heredity” and “fitness” are all it can give us; but on what do these rest, around what centre are they grouped? Science does not know. Yet the fact that the individuals of the human, and of every kingdom below the human, through all the changes of growth, destruction, and reconstruction, to which they are subject during even one life, still preserve a certain continuity, proves to every man that he is not a mere series of cells, vessels and organs, but that he has an independent life which overrules the other lives of which his body is composed. This Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden calls the Individuality as distinguished from the Individual – a distinction more likely to lead to confusion than that made by H. P. Blavatsky between Individuality and Personality. This line of development is placed parallel with the three other lines of development in man – the palæontologic (of form), the specific, the ontogenetic (individual), and the individualistic. These four are placed as pairs of opposites, forming what is called the Darwinian square, and again are arranged on the four sides of a pyramid, the apex of which is man in his completed evolution. On the one side the degrees represent the kingdoms of life, ascending from the elementary to the human kingdom; on another, the development of form, from the molecule through cell and germ to the complete animal and man; on the third, the same evolution epitomized in man; on the fourth, the potencies which culminate in will and reason. This last and greatest is alleged to be the cause of all the other lines of evolution, and in each new birth it is shown to start from a higher basis. It is also called “individualistic Causality”, and is represented as working in two ways; from within outwards, and from without inwards; the author, however, draws a distinction between this method and the vis externa et interna of Haeckel. The problems of heredity and family relationships are treated at length and are shown to be all conducive to the one end of building up the permanent individuality in man. The same line of argument and illustration is applied to the Hindu teachings, the nomenclature of the various schools of philosophy being clearly tabulated.
If the Secret Doctrine had not taught us the descent of the “Sons of Mind”, and that Nature unaided fails, we might be fascinated by the completeness of the scheme of fourfold development as set forth in this work of 340 Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden; the tables and diagrams are interesting, and certainly valuable in giving a clear idea of the views they illustrate. But if we read the author aright, that the spiritual nature, the individuality in man, is born of and developed from his lower nature, we fail to see in what his teaching differs, save in degree, from that of the Haeckels and the Darwins whom he professes to transcend. There is doubtless great satisfaction in building up a scheme in which no link is missing and every screw fits into its right hole; but if there is a fallacy at the base, of what use to proceed with the superstructure? Surely our knowledge is as yet too imperfect for us to be able to frame a system which shall be so complete in all its parts. The Secret Doctrine tells us that but a corner of the veil is as yet lifted which has hitherto hidden and still continues to hide from us the many mysteries of man’s nature. Centuries of research and toil are yet necessary, and many Rounds and Races have still to run their course, before the full revelation of man will be made to himself, and before the volume can be written which shall contain the last word of human occult knowledge. Nevertheless this work is a decided advance on the teachings of ordinary materialism, since it recognises as the chief factor in man’s progress the all-dominating intelligence which, once developed, never loses its supreme position as the moulder and framer of man’s destiny through countless lives to his ultimate perfection. The impulse to this Dr. H. Schleiden considers to be Pleasure, Joy, purified by Pain and Love, Lust, Leid und Liebe.
E.K.
The Imitation of Buddha.[11]
Such is the title of one of the most charming little publications it has been our good fortune to welcome for many a long day. Mr. Bowden is indeed deserving of the grateful thanks of all true lovers of the wisdom of him who had “mercy even on the meanest thing”; and this little compilation of texts from the Buddhist scriptures will at least serve to prove to the West that long before the Sermon on the Mount was preached in Palestine, there existed in the world teachings as exalted and as beautiful as anything which the West possesses. Nay, we go further, for – to quote Mr. Bowden's own words, in the Proem – “the tone of the average Buddhist treatise, with its formal exhortations, recurring as a matter of course, to show mercy upon every living thing”, is surely calculated to impress even the most casual reader with the fact that, in this respect at all events, Gautama Buddha’s teachings exhibit a marked superiority to that of the great Western Teacher, of whom not one word enjoining mercy on the dumb brutes has come down to us in his recorded utterances.
The Imitation of Buddha is prefaced by a graceful little introduction from the pen of Sir Edwin Arnold, with whom we are in most complete accord when he says that “he who should mark the passage of the months from January to December with these simple pages must become, I think, a better man at the year’s end than at its beginning.”
The only notices which we have as yet seen of this Buddhist text book (one text, or more, for each day in the year), have been one or two in which the reviewer has apparently taken the trouble to hunt carefully through its pages for the few – very few – passages, which might possibly be looked upon as having no practical bearing on daily life and conduct: these are then triumphantly cited as fair specimens of the contents of the book, whereas 341 the exact opposite is the case. Its pages simply abound with such injunctions as the following, taken at random: – “Twit not others with that which pains yourself”; “With pure thoughts and fulness of love, I will do towards others what I do for myself”; “He lives only to be a help to others”; “Is not all I possess, even to my very body, kept for the benefit of others?” – all of which are to be found on two pages only. Again, “Overcome evil by good”; “This great principle of returning good for evil”; “He came to remove the sorrows of all living things”; texts which take somewhat from the cream of certain others known to all dwellers in Christian lands, and hitherto supposed to contain teaching as unsurpassed as it was unique. We can but reiterate our thanks to Mr. Bowden for placing before us, in such a handy and readable form, the means of proving this assumption to be a mistaken and an unwarrantable one.
Contrast the injunction to be found in the gospel according to St. Matthew (Chap. xvi. 15.) with the following: –
“Go ye, O Brethren, and wander forth, for the gain of the many, in compassion for the world, for the good, for the gain, for the welfare of . . . men. . . Publish, O Brethren, the doctrine glorious. . . Preach ye a life of holiness . . . perfect and pure.” “Go, then, through every country, convert those not converted. . . Go, therefore, each one travelling alone; filled with compassion, go, rescue and receive”.
Mark the reiterated note of compassion sounding through these texts; not in order to gain adherents, not in order to terrify those who refuse to listen, but out of compassion are the Brethren to go forth and preach the good news, the “doctrine glorious.” For, says Buddha, “Should those who are not with us, O Brethren, speak in dispraise of me, or of my doctrine, or of the church, that is no reason why you should give way to anger.” “Why should there be such sorrowful contention?” runs another of the texts quoted by the able compiler. “You honour what we honour, both alike: then we are brothers as concerns religion.” “No decrying of other sects, . . . no depreciation (of others) without cause, but on the contrary, a rendering of honour to other sects for whatever cause honour is due.” And indeed we are tempted to go on and quote almost the whole book, which is full of the most precious gems, “any one of which” as Sir Edwin Arnold says, “worn on the heart, would be sufficient to make the wearer rich beyond estimation for a day.”
Some of these Buddhist texts are repeated almost word for word in the Christian Gospels and Epistles; viz: “Not to be weary in well-doing”; “Make no idols of any kind”: “Look not upon a woman unchastely”; “We will patiently suffer threats and blows at the hands of foolish men”:
“He who now gives in charity |
“Of all possessions, contentedness is the best by far”; “Keep watch over your hearts”; “Work out your own salvation with diligence”; Abhor dissimulation”; “Indolence is defilement”; “By work mankind exists.” But space fails, although we have but taken specimens at random from the mine of wealth hidden in this little book; enough has, however, we hope, been given to induce all our readers to take advantage of Mr. Bowden's unique compilation for themselves, and daily to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” this Imitation of Buddha.
A. L. C.
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What Is Theosophy?[12]
This interesting little book of 128 closely printed pages, endeavours, and with much success, to condense the infinite topics of Theosophical teaching and the history of the movement into a space suited for the “hurry of the day”. It starts with a notice of the foundation of the Society, and gives a short sketch of the lives of Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. The second chapter plunges us into Rounds, Races and Planetary Chains, perhaps somewhat too precipitately for the uninstructed reader, and would be improved by a paragraph plainly stating the idea of a Chain before carrying us in medias res. The writer next proceeds to expound the Theosophical conception of the constitution of man, the state after death, re-incarnation and Karma, which bring us to the all-important subject of ethics. The fundamental thought of this section is naturally the unity of humanity, and the impossibility of the individual giving birth to an act, word or deed, that does not affect his fellows. The Occult axiom that “Thoughts are Things” here provides us with that scientific basis of ethics which the present day stands so terribly in need of. The subject is well treated, but naturally in such a condensed space for so vast a theme much has to be left unsaid. It might, however, have been well to have dwelt a moment on the wide range of ethical teaching that Theosophy offers to its adherents in throwing open to them the whole procurable teachings of the great religious reformers of humanity. The chapters on “States of Matter” and “States of Consciousness” continue the scientific teachings of Theosophy, and the latter chapter enables the author to introduce the interesting classification of dreams that H. P. B. gave us, and to enlarge on this most natural gate-way to the invisible world. The chapter on the Mahatmas also will do much to straighten out the ideas of the public on the subject, and is especially valuable as containing the key-stone of our Theosophical teaching in the doctrine of the “Great Renunciation.” This is followed by a useful chapter on occult study, in which Mr. Old is careful to draw the distinction between Theosophy and Occultism, and to dwell on the difficult nature of the latter subject and the conditions under which alone it can be entered upon with safety. Our brother in his conclusion, and with the humility of the student who feels the impossibility of doing justice to so vast a subject, simply because he knows more of its enormous scope than those who have never studied, speaks of his labours as a “mere outline”, and brings them to an end by removing several popular misconceptions. But even though the volume be a “mere outline” compared to the fuller knowledge of the author, it is a useful and ample statement for those who have not previously approached such lines of thought, and cannot fail to do good work.
The work is further embellished by excellent photographs of H. P. Blavatsky and H. S. Olcott, and the cover displays a most artistic design inspired by Egyptian symbology, from the pencil of our brother, R. Machell. We hear that the whole MS. was written in less than ten days, so that we shall not be surprised whenever a new book comes from the pen of so rapid a worker as Mr. W. R. Old.
Intima Sacra.[13]
This Manual of Esoteric Devotion is a compilation of some of the writings of Dr. Anna Kingsford, and, as we understand from a foreword to the book, has received the sanction of Mrs. Kingsford’s trustee and literary collaborator, Mr. Edward Maitland, who also assisted in the selection of the passages contained in the work. The book itself is an elegant little volume 343 of 163 pages neatly bound in vellum. Its contents are such as to enlist the attention and secure the admiration of every sincere reader, while to those who are already conversant with the writings of Dr. Kingsford, the form in which the Theosophical teachings of the Intima Sacra are presented in the manual, cannot fail to meet with approval.
The preface by the Compiler is replete with Theosophy, and affords a very lucid introduction to the esotericism of the work as a whole. The substance of this abstract is symmetrical, compact, and sequential in thought; while the spirit of its conception loses little or nothing in the method of its presentation.
“There is one Being”, says the compiler, “self-subsistent, infinite, divine, originally and in itself unmanifest and undividuate, but impersonal only in the sense of being devoid of limitations, for it is essential and absolute Consciousness. This is God, who is the only real Being. As Spirit, God is Unity. As Energy and Substance – the necessary constituents of all and every being – God is a Duality: and God becomes manifest through the evolution of His Trinity”.
There is nothing in the above to which Theosophy does not consent when the particular use of the terms “God” and “personal” are understood. The latter we think a misnomer as applied to soul in the following passage:
“Life is the elaboration of soul through the varied transformations of matter. Soul is the medium in which spirit is individuated. Spirit of itself is diffuse; but enclosed in an envelope of soul-substance, it becomes an indiffusible personality”.
Neither can we consent to the definition of life as given above, which is descriptive only of the purpose of life and not of Life itself, which as one of the three Divine hypostases of Consciousness, Life and Substance, must ever defy all definition. “Spirit”, it is said, “is always energy, and soul is always substance”, and Soul is described as working upwards in the scale of evolution to that point where in man it becomes sufficiently specialized and polarized to receive the Divine Spirit. But if “energy and substance, of which all things consist, are in themselves divine”, and if “evolution is the manifestation of inherency”, as stated in the preface, then, as there can be no evolution of substance (soul) apart from energy (spirit), it would seem that there can be no such disunion of soul and spirit at any time along the line of evolution, as to admit of the eventual and conditional reception of “spirit” by “soul” as stated above. We think the term “soul” is used too loosely in the christianized aspects of Theosophic teachings, and that the third hypostasis, Consciousness, is not sufficiently represented. There is a curious chapter on “Reincarnation”, which seems to lose sight of the fact that all limitations implied by form, &c., are imperfections, and apply as much to woman as to man. “Neither is greater or less than the other, none is before or after another” is a passage which conveys the meaning of the Christ-state equally with that of the Epistle of S. Clement, from which unfortunately the essential point is omitted in quotation; “When two shall be as One, and that which is without as that which is Within”, completed by the phrase, “and the male with the female neither male nor female”.
Those who have found helpful teaching in the writings of Dr. Kingsford – and they must be many – will find in this book a choice of passages by those whose knowledge of the true spirit of her doctrines gives them a pre-eminent ability in a compilation of this nature.
W. R. O.
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Theosophical Activities.
Indian Section.
As the details of the General Secretary’s tour have not yet come to hand, we must content ourselves by again stating that Bertram Keightley is hard at work visiting the branches in Bengal, Punjab, and the N.W. Provinces.
Brother Kotayya Chetty, the inspector of Branches, has made up a new programme, and visits during the months of November and December, Chittoor, Erode, Coimbatore, Palghat, Trichoor, Cochin, Trivandrum, Tinnevelly, and Ambasamudram.
We are glad to see that our scholarly brethren at Kumbakonam are translating the Kalki Purâna, Visudevamanum (which is ready for press), Laghu-Yoga Vasistam and Garuda Purâna; also an edition of Apastamba’s Grihya Shâstra, with the commentary of Sudarshana, is being prepared from the collation of seven MSS. by one of our members, who is specially qualified for it, with the assistance of one of the best Pandits in Southern India.
The Bhavnagar Branch report that through the exertion of their secretary, Mr. J. N. Unwalla, assisted by Mr. Jatashanker Yadneshnar Bhatt, a Society, consisting of the best Shâstris of the place and many of the leading citizens, is being formed to inculcate in the minds of the public the necessity of studying their religion and adhering more closely to the creed of their forefathers.
A new Branch has been formed at Umballa, making the eighth new Branch for the present year.
European Section.
Annie Besant’s Indian Tour. – Annie Besant has been compelled to postpone her visit to India for this season, her physician having forbidden her to make the visit this year, and recommended a brief holiday; she has utilized this by paying a brief visit to New York. The press of editorial and other work also, at Headquarters, is so great, that it is exceedingly doubtful whether in any case the visit could have been made, and therefore also her stay in New York will not be longer than a week.
Adelphi Lodge. – A charter of incorporation was issued to the Adelphi Lodge on Friday, 20th November, 1891. The officers of the Lodge are John M. Watkins, President; P. W. Bullock, Vice-President; and R. E. Shaw, Hon. Secretary. The Lodge has been formed to supply the want of an organization for the study of Theosophy in Central London. The members meet at the Reading Room, 7, Duke Street, Adelphi, London, W.C., every Monday evening, at 8 p.m. The regular meetings are alternately private and open to visitors; those on the first and third Mondays in the month are reserved for private study, while visitors are invited to attend the meetings on the second and fourth Mondays.
The Bow Club. – The Matron begs to apologise if she has omitted to thank any of the kind friends who sent parcels on the two or three days just before (and actually one hour before) the Jumble Sale. Her best thanks are also due to the ladies who so kindly assisted at the stalls, of whose offers of help she will gladly avail herself next month at a sale of plain 345 warm clothing for the very poor, to which all good Theosophists are earnestly invited to contribute either money, work or materials.
Clothes and boots for little children are anxiously desired. Some working men called the day after the sale to know if any were left that they could have cheap for their little ones.
Materials should be sent at once to the Matron, who could then give out the work to many poor women starving for lack of employment.
Any money contributed will supply fair wages for their work. An account for all receipts will be sent to Headquarters for publication. Cheap, good bundles of remnants are sold by Mr. John Noble, The Warehouse, Manchester.
The receipts from the Jumble Sale recently held amounted to £15 3s. 2¼d.
Mrs. Lloyd writes that it is proposed to divide the Christmas festivities at the Club into three undertakings. A hot supper for the match girls, with a concert and entertainment afterwards: for the mackintosh girls and other factory members a tea, a conjuring entertainment and a dance: and a Christmas tree for the children. Donations towards the expenses and offers of help are solicited from all interested. These may be addressed to Mrs. Lloyd, 193, Bow Road, E.
The League of Theosophical Workers in London have had repeated disappointments in the way of procuring a suitable house for their several new undertakings; every other arrangement is completed for the Crèche, and most generous donations have been made, and help rendered: arrangements are also made for combining with it a Soup Kitchen, and sixty gallons of soup per diem are already promised. The scheme is to let the poor have the soup at a 1d. a bowl, although the cost price is 2d. The extra penny is to be made up by the donations of the charitable. We sincerely hope that the Committee have ere this been relieved of their anxiety by at last finding the right house in the right place, without impossible conditions.
Falmouth. – Since the visit of a prominent London Theosophist, much interest has been aroused with regard to Theosophy in Falmouth. Several small drawing-room meetings took place, and at the last a paper was read by a resident Theosophist giving an outline of the principles of Theosophy. Many questions have been asked, and literature is being circulated.
Theosophical Libraries. – The list of libraries opened by the Countess Wachtmeister has been augmented since our last issue, by the formation of others at Plumstead, Bournemouth, and Norwich, which are in the care of the following Fellows of the Society: W. G. Wratten, Hypatia Villa, Wrottesley Road, Plumstead, S.E.; H. S. Green, High Street, Christchurch, Hants.; and Selby Green, 67, Newmarket Road, Norwich. Members having friends in those localities should acquaint them with the above.
Liverpool Lodge. – On Friday, 13th November, Mrs. Besant gave a lecture on “Theosophy and Occultism”, in the Rotunda Lecture Hall, to about 1,400 people. The hall was filled to its utmost capacity, and we had to close the doors. The audience was a most intelligent and critical one, and it is therefore gratifying to say that, judging from appearances, the lecture was received with general satisfaction. Results, both financially and otherwise, quite exceeded our expectations, and we anticipate a busy time amongst enquirers for the next week or two. P. H. Rathbone, Esq., J.P., one of our most influential townsmen, presided.
Dublin Lodge. – Syllabus of Discussions: – Dec. 9th – “Modern Black Magic”, F. J. Dick. Dec. 23rd – “An Occult Theory of Dreams”, H. M. Magee. Jan. 6th – “Du Prel’s Philosophy of Mysticism”, P. Jordan. Jan. 20th – “Symbolism”, G. W. Russell.
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Scottish Lodge. – The rapidly increasing numbers of the Lodge are almost beginning to press on the accommodation. Each meeting is larger than the preceding one, and new associates are being constantly enrolled. At our last meeting eight new associates were added to our list, and we had a number of visitors, who will probably join shortly.
The last meeting was the third of the winter course on “Occult Science in its Relation to Physical Science”, and the subject of the paper was “The Borderland of Physics”, by an eminent consulting chemist. Taking as his leading principle the position maintained by H.P.B. in the Secret Doctrine and elaborated by the President in a recent paper, that physical science often marches up to a blank wall and scrawls figures upon it, the lecturer pointed out various notable examples in his own science where this had been done, and how a little chink in the wall, found or made by someone a little in advance of his fellows, had paved the way for others afterwards to get beyond that wall, only to walk up to another. He indicated how Occultism seemed to throw a light on dark places, and to give a clue through unexplored labyrinths of science, and the duty that lay on scientific men to patiently learn what Occultism had to teach them, and at all events to try whether this venerable learning might not show them new paths and wider light than they had yet attained. Some interesting experiments followed, in which, from the decomposition of water and the formation of vortex rings, the workings of Fohat, described in the President’s paper, were practically indicated, and some useful correspondences were shown. A further paper on the same subject will probably be given later in the session.
Brother Fricke has delivered a public lecture in Amsterdam which has been much appreciated. One of the leading clergymen of the city, who is much interested in Theosophy, has preached on Karma. The League members report good work in the way of getting work-people together and gaining their sympathy. On Sunday afternoons a gathering of children takes place, and they are instructed in the principles of temperance in all things and kindness to the brute creation. A Debating Club has also been formed.
Very satisfactory reports come from Le Siége Français. The meetings are very well attended, a Sanskrit class is formed under the direction of an experienced Orientalist, and everybody is putting their shoulder to the wheel.
The last month has been marked by two events of some importance to our Group. The first is the founding at Barcelona of a Theosophical Headquarters, which our members have succeeded in establishing by uniting their efforts to this end, so much desired by us all. The rapidity with which the Headquarters has been founded is the more surprising when we remember that the pecuniary resources of the group are very limited at present.
This proves, once again, how much may be done by a few willing energetic persons, animated by a high aim, inspired by a noble cause, and above all united by personal disinterestedness, thus producing the necessary harmony.
The Headquarters’ premises are situated in the centre of Barcelona, spacious enough to permit us offering hospitality to any of our brothers, Spanish or foreign, who may honour us with a visit.
Receptions are held at Headquarters, when those who are interested 347 in Theosophy, or in philosophical questions, are admitted by a card of introduction from any member. We are also looking forward to the formation of a library, which will be at the Headquarters of the T.S. at Barcelona.
In Madrid receptions are held every Sunday at the residence of Bro. José Melian, who works with much devotion and intelligence for the cause of Theosophy.
The foundation of a Theosophical Centre in Barcelona is of the utmost importance to the cause in Spain, for it will undoubtedly be the starting point of a far more active and fruitful propaganda. The fact that our Bro. Montoliu has undertaken the direction of the new Barcelona Centre is a guarantee for the success of the Headquarters there.
American Section.
We are informed that five lectures have been arranged for Annie Besant during her short stay in the States; three at New York, one at Philadelphia and one at Fort Wayne.
The American Section reports the formation of two new Branches, the “San Francisco T.S.” and the “Providence T.S.”, these being the 59th and 60th on the roll of American Branches.
Some devoted Theosophists in the city of Mexico have translated into Spanish a pamphlet entitled Theosophy from a German point of view; the pamphlet Theosophy the Religion of Jesus is next to be translated.
We take the following from The Path and reprint it in extenso as the only fit acknowledgment of the real solid work and untiring energy of our friend and colleague William Q. Judge.
The General Secretary left New York on September 8th, and passed eight hours in Chicago, where he saw Bros. Wright and Phelon, learning from them, to his very great satisfaction, that the Chicago T.S. has taken a room in the Athenæum building, which is to be kept open all day and evening. The location is good, being in the central part of the city and near the lake.
Mr. Judge reached Omaha on the 10th, and left on the 11th for Seattle, where he was the guest of Bro. F. L. Blodgett, and where on the 15th he lectured to an audience of 600 in the Opera House. He held also a meeting of the T.S. Then on the 16th he went to Tacoma, and was entertained by Bro. Schwagerl, lecturing in the Unitarian Church to 250 people, and having a large T.S. gathering at his host's residence. On the 19th he went to Portland, Oregon, and lectured in the evening in the Unitarian Church to 250. The T.S. met on Sunday morning, and in the afternoon Mr. Judge spoke in the Hall of the Grand Army of the Republic upon “The Sevenfold Constitution of Man”.
On Tuesday, 21st, he descended by rail to San Francisco, and was met at Oakland by a delegation from the Golden Gate Lodge. Dr. J. A. Anderson was his host. A meeting of the new “San Francisco T.S.” was held that evening, and on the 22nd, a large private meeting of F.T.S. On the 24th the Golden Gate Lodge met at the Headquarters, the rooms being crowded, and heard an address upon the T.S., and the general doctrines and duties of members. Many were present from Oakland, Los Angeles, and San José; questions were asked and answered, and then came an informal reception. The evening began at 7.30 and ended at 10.15.
On Saturday evening, 26th, he addressed 180 persons at Alameda. At eleven on Sunday morning he visited the Sunday School in S.F. and saw its very interesting workings. It was a sort of “Mystery Play”, with characters representing all the great teachers. The instruction and results impressed him as good. “These people are far ahead of New York”, he
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writes. He spoke on Sunday afternoon at Oakland to 325, all standing room being taken and many persons turned away. His first lecture in San Francisco was on the same evening. Odd Fellows’ Hall, seating 1,800, was completely filled.
On the evening of Monday, 28th, he spoke in another hall on Re-incarnation, and repeated this lecture at Oakland on the evening of the 29th. On the 30th he went to Santa Cruz and lectured to 350 at Bierman’s Hall. Intelligent questions were asked, and a number of inquirers called the next day. Here also he met the Branch and held private meetings. On October 1st he went to Soquel, where he met the new Branch at the house of Mr. Wm. R. Wilson, and on the 2nd went to Gilroy, lecturing at Masonic Hall in the evening and holding meetings of members. On the 3rd he left Gilroy for San José, where a good audience heard him at Odd Fellows’ Hall. The next day he returned to San Francisco for a lecture upon “Karma and Ethics”, but visited Berkeley by special request of the Progressive Spiritualists, in camp-meeting assembled, and lectured to them upon Reincarnation. At the reception given to the President-Founder the General Secretary was of course present, and to him said Col. Olcott, “Take your seat by my side as you did at New York in 1875: we were one in the work then and are now”. Mr. Judge presided at the monster meeting in Metropolitan Temple, on the evening of the 7th, and introduced Col. Olcott to the audience. The 8th and 9th he passed at Stockton, lecturing each evening, and holding both Branch and private meetings. The press reports in Stockton were exceptionably able. On the 10th he departed for Los Angeles, and arrived on the 11th, being received at the station by a delegation from the local Branches. So much interest was manifested and so much work needed attention that he remained in Los Angeles and the neighbourhood nearly a week. On the 12th he lectured at Ventura to 200 in Union Hall; attended a reception on the 13th at Miss Off’s, and lectured at Campbell's Hall in East Los Angeles, twenty-five persons standing, about 200 in all; on the 14th held a private meeting and gave lecture, and lectured at Pasadena in the evening; on the 15th he addressed the Ladies’ Club, about 200 of the most important Los Angeles women being present. On the 17th he went to Santa Ana for an address, and on the 18th to San Diego for lectures, Branch and private meetings. Here he remained until the 21st, then departing to San Bernardino for an address in the evening. Returning to San Francisco, he gave his final lecture in San Francisco, October 26th, upon “The Inner Constitution of Man”. He left for Sacramento on the following day, intending a lecture and private meeting there, and then proceeded to Salt Lake City.
Chicago. – The two Chicago T.S. Branches (Ramayana T.S. and Chicago T.S.) have formed a joint committee for Theosophical work, to be known as the “Central States Committee for Theosophical work”, and desire to ask all the T.S. Branches of the north-west, middle, and south-west to co-operate in its objects. These are as follows, in part: –
- To keep open a General Headquarters in Chicago.
- To maintain a library in said Headquarters.
- To stimulate activity in Theosophic circles, to the end that the principles of the Society and Theosophy may be more widely spread.
- To start such co-operative work from time to time, as shall aid those objects, and generally to do all that can be done, by united effort, to increase interest and inquiry into Theosophy, as well as to stimulate Branch work, and form new Branches.
The Chicago Branches above-named have opened a Headquarters at Room 30, Athenæum Building, 26, Van Buren Street, Chicago, which is centrally located. For the present, the Chicago T.S. has its library there, and someone is in attendance each day from 2 to 5 o’clock p.m.
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Theosophical and Mystic Publications.
The Theosophist, for November, opens with a paper, entitled “My Hypnotic Research in France,” by Colonel Olcott, in which, after a general introduction and a review of the present position held by hypnotic research in the scientific world, he details the experiments he witnessed at the Hospital of La Salpêtrière at Paris, reserving the experiments observed at Nancy for a following number. By visiting these two opposing schools, whose leading lights are Drs. Charcot and Bernheim, the Colonel is able to contrast the physiological and psychological theories advanced respectively by them. The article cannot fail to be interesting to a wide circle of readers, both theosophical and non-theosophical. Dr. Buck follows with a paper on “Modern Science”, and answers the question, “is it the borderland of Theosophy”, in the affirmative, making a very strong point against Modern Civilization in dwelling on the appalling number of the insane with which our lunatic asylums are crowded. The next paper, “In Memoriam”, voices the sad news that P. Iyalu Naidu Garu, President of the Hyderabad Branch, and one of the oldest and most enthusiastic members of the T. S. in India, is no longer with us. He was a most devoted admirer of H.P.B. and an unwearied student of her work, and his reputation for veracity and honesty of purpose was spread far and wide. It is strange that two such men as Kally Krishna Mitter and P. Iyalu Naidu Garu should have left us almost at the same time and so soon after the teacher they loved so well. We can ill spare such men at any time, far less when there is so much to do. Later on in this number some notes, entitled “Mahatma Help”, from the note-book of our late brother, are published and are well worth perusal by experienced Theosophists. The “Hansa-Upanishad of Sukla-Yajur-Veda”, the contribution of the indefatigable members of the Kumbakonam T.S., gives a category of sounds heard by the Yogi, that will be interesting to students of the Voice of the Silence.
“It (Nâda) is (heard as) of ten kinds. The first is chini (the sound of that word); the second is chini-chini; the third is the sound of a bell; the fourth is that of conch; the fifth is that of thanthri (the sound of a musical instrument); the sixth is the sound of thala (cymbals); the seventh is that of flute; the eight is that of beri (drum); the ninth is that of mridanga (double drum); and the tenth is that of clouds (viz., thunder). He may experience the tenth without the first nine sounds (through the initiation of a Guru).”
Those who wish to hear about the Central, Polar, Equatorial and Visible Suns should read Dr. Henry Pratt’s continuation of his essay on “Elohistic Mysteries”; his present contribution deals with the “Mystery of Manifestation”. C. R. Srinivasayangar presents us with a quaint legend concerning one of the 18 Siddhas or Adepts of the Tamil country. Miss Kislingbury follows with the first part of a paper on “Modes of Meditation” used by members of the Society of Jesus, which are described as of three kinds: Vocal, Mental, and Contemplative. The translation of the Sânkhya treatise, entitled “Sânkhya-Tattwa-Kaumadi of Vachaspati Misra”, is continued, and is followed by a long article on the “Shrâdâ Ceremony of the Hindus”, which will be especially interesting to Spiritualists. K. Naranaswami Iyer and R. Sundareswara Sastri, B.A., better known as the “Two members of the Kumbakonam T.S.”, probably owing to the late controversy on “Is retrogression possible”, present us with a translation of “The Episode of Jadabharata”, or Idiotic Bharata, from the Mahâ Bhâgvata Purâna, the incident round which the late argument especially centred. Of course only students of mystical mythology will appreciate it.
The Path, for November, is introduced to the reader by a paper by “Pilgrim”, called “The Ideal and the Practical”. He starts by denying that “the self-dubbed practical people of to-day are the fittest judges of the practicability of any ideal theory”, and then proceeds with his subject, making use of some very valuable quotations. “A Vision” follows, in which the three highest Principles are identified with the Absolute, so that it is a relief to turn to the next paper by Dr. Keightley, in which some of the fundamental concepts of the Secret Doctrine are treated of under the title “The Natural Law of Altruism”. This is followed by a study from the same inexhaustible treasure-house of instruction, entitled “The Synthesis of Occult Science”, by “Demophilus”, which is to be continued. It deals with evolution, life, atoms, molecules, etc. The Rev. W. 350 E. Copeland, F.T.S., next contributes a capital article on what he calls “The Forgotten Article” of the Apostles’ Creed.
“All men are God”, he writes, “unless they have altogether driven away the God part, have divorced the Higher and Lower Selves, and, like the Jews in the time of Jesus, have the Devil for father. The all-important doctrine of Theosophy, as it seems to me, which overtops all others, or rather, on which all others are founded, is ‘Man God’. All men are Sons of God, for in all dwells the Light, in all is incarnate the Word; else are we not men at all, only bodies having the appearance of men, from which the Higher Self has departed.”
The unity of all souls with Deity is a fundamental teaching which can by no means be disregarded by any system. “Tea Table Talk” describes the wild excitement and rush of human nature at a fire, to rescue a fellow mortal, and uses this dramatic incident to moralize on why such horrid crises are necessary to awaken the feeling of kinship that is otherwise mostly dormant. Alexander Fullerton concludes the number by throwing the light of Theosophy on the problem of “Death”.
The Buddhist continues the “Paticca-samuppada” or the Doctrine of the Causes of Sentient Existence. From it we learn that: –
“Avidyâ comprises eight things, namely, not knowing: – (1) what misery is, (2) the cause of misery, (3) the destruction of misery, (4) the way leading to the destruction of misery, (5) the condition of eternity (that is, without a beginning), (6) the state of everlastingness (that is, without an end), (7) the nature of both eternity and everlastingness, and (8) the cause of sentient existence.”
The latter, the Nidânas, are given as follows, omitting repetitions: –
“Whence do decay and death, jaramarana, proceed, and what is their cause?
Decay and death proceed from birth, jâti; birth therefore is their cause.
Birth proceeds from continued existence, bhâva; continued existence, therefore, is its cause.
Continued existence proceeds from attachment, upâdâna; attachment, therefore, is its cause.
Attachment proceeds from desire, tanha; desire, therefore, is its cause.
Desire proceeds from sensation, vedanâ; sensation, therefore, is its cause.
Sensation proceeds from contact, phassa; contact, therefore, is its cause.
Contact proceeds from the six organs of sense, shadayatana; the six organs of sense are, therefore, its cause.
The six organs of sense proceed from the aggregates of mind and body, nâma, rûpa; the aggregates of mind and body are, therefore, their causes.
The aggregates of mind and body proceed from consciousness, vinnana; consciousness is, therefore, their cause.
Consciousness proceeds from mental action, sankhâra; mental action is, therefore, its cause.
Mental action proceeds from ignorance, avidyâ; ignorance, therefore, is its cause.”
A missionary organ having attacked the temperate criticism of the Rev. Sumangala on Sir Monier William’s scholarship, The Buddhist takes up the cudgels and tells us what a man must be before the natives of India and Ceylon accord him the rank of a Sanskrit or Pâli scholar. Their standard is a little too stiff for Westerns to pass.
Le Lotus Bleu, for November, is quite an excellent number, and has for its first article a continuation of the résumé of the Secret Doctrine, which cannot fail to work towards the construction of a solid foundation for Theosophy in France. Guymiot writes on “Solidarité”. The translation of H.P.B.’s article on “Cosmic Mind” is concluded, and the translation of the Key continued. Dr. Bonnejoy (du Vexin) writes interestingly on Vegetarianism. The editor, an enthusiast for Eastern philosophy and science, translates those strange fragments on Yoga that appeared in the last page of the Oriental Department. The questions and answers at the end of the number, the digest of the news and notices of publications, are exceedingly well managed, so that the Lotus Bleu will have a very bad Karma if it does not rapidly increase its circulation.
The Vahan deals mostly with questions on reincarnation, to which it returns answers which show that within certain broad lines students of Theosophy have a consensus of opinion. The difficulty, however, appears to be the impossibility of condensing into a short space, sometimes only a few lines, an answer that would require an enormous volume to do it justice. The list of new queries to be tackled holds forth promises of interesting numbers in the future, and generally the sectional magazine continues to prove its utility in many ways.
The Theosophical Forum, No. 28, again deals with the oft-recurring question: “If every man must work out his own salvation through Karmic law, is not all charity, public and private, as well as all punishment, public and private, alike an interference with the decrees of Karma?” With regard to the first clause, 351 the whole teaching of the Bhagavad Gîtâ and the Voice of the Silence is an emphatic answer, and the verse in the latter, “Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin”, is conclusive on the point. The second clause is more difficult to elucidate, but the Forum acquits itself very creditably and gives a sensible answer. The questions dealing with mediumship and insanity are also well answered. The proof of No. 29, which we have just received, contains a slashing answer to Moncure D. Conway's article on Theosophy in the Arena, in which the Editor makes common property of Mr. Conway’s inability to realise the awful fact that H.P.B. should presume to laugh at so great a man as himself.
The Prasnottara, No. 9, contains a quaint Indian proverb which one of the contributors uses in answering a question on Devachan. It runs: “The strong only perspire while the weak have to sleep”. The number contains interesting answers on the necessity of celibacy in Yoga training, and on the raison d’être of the Egyptian custom of embalming the dead. It is suggested that the process was originally resorted to in the case of Adepts in order to preserve the link of physical memory and knowledge acquired during the life-time of the defunct personality. In No. 10 a very interesting allegorical legend is given, explanatory of the “Eye of Shiva” or the “Third Eye”. We cannot refrain from quoting, italicizing the key-words.
Once upon a time there lived three Rakshasas who were doing the greatest mischief to all the worlds and people, by crushing them with the weight of the flying or aërial forts and empires over which they reigned. The whole world not being able to bear these sufferings, applied to the god Shiva for help, and he promised to blot these Rakshasas out of existence. Accordingly he prepared himself for the forthcoming battle by causing the earth as his car, the sun and the moon as the two wheels of the car, and Vishnu as his bow, to be prepared, and with these preparations he started for the battle-field. Shiva found it impossible to vanquish the three foes, and when he consulted with the minor gods as to why even his prowess failed, they all told him that he (Shiva) had forgotten to perform the preliminary pûjâ to Ganapati, and hence his inability. On hearing this sage counsel, Shiva performed the pûjâ and started a second time for battle, and in this attempt the three Rakshasas were burnt to ashes, at a single glance of Shiva’s “third eye”; and thus ends the story.
Shiva represents spirit, and the earth-car is the human body; the two wheels – the sun and the moon – are Pingala and Ida; and the bow, Vishnu, is an aspect of the Logos, which has its seat in Sushumna. All the Occult books speak of the right eye as the “son”, and the left eye as the “moon”; the one as Purusha and the other as Prakriti; the one as positive and the other as negative. The Nâdis, Pingâla and Ida, terminate in the right and left eyes respectively, and the “third eye” is situated in the middle of the two eyes, but a little above [i.e., glans pinealis], and this eye, “Rudra’s eye”, is the psychic eye wherein Sushumna terminates; but it is latent and blind in all average humanity, and opens its sight powers only in such people as “Shiva”, who represents a fully developed Yogi.
The three Rakshasas with their flying cities and forts represent the three bodies and corresponding Avasthâs, and the mischief they do signifies the woes and ills to which humanity is subject, owing to the spirit being enclosed in the three Upâdhis or bodies, which, even when burnt to ashes, sprouts again in other places, when the soul wakes into the objective world from its subjective Devachanic state, thence its flying nature; while the burning by “Shiva’s third eye” clearly indicates that it (the third eye) is the seat of complete Jnânam [knowledge] and of the highest spiritual intuition and perception.
Theosophical Siftings, Vol. IV., No. 13, contains a careful paper on “The Septenary Nature of Consciousness” by Mrs. Cleather. It is chiefly a study from the Secret Doctrine and shows that the writer has been a diligent student. There is an interesting table illustrative of Mendelejeff’s Periodic Law, which is on a septenary scale, exemplifying the fact that the properties of the elements of science bear a definite relation to their atomic weights. Mrs. Cleather sums up the results of her enquiry in the words of Paracelsus: “There is nothing in the macrocosm of nature that is not contained in man, because man and nature are essentially one; and a man who is conscious of being one with nature will know everything, if he knows only – himself”.
Pauses for November continues its useful programme, reprinting short interesting articles from various theosophical and mystic publications. What is to be especially noted is that the articles chosen are from the pens of Western writers, most of them being of a distinctly practical character.
The Pacific Theosophist is a new Theosophical Monthly, started by our energetic members on the Pacific Coast, U.S.A. It is entirely impersonal, none of the articles being signed, in accordance with its programme “to endeavour to present in each number as 352 simple an exposition of the philosophy, science and religion embraced by the word Theosophy, or Wisdom-Religion, as possible. It is not in the field for money, or to air the personality of anyone, and will continue so long as voluntary subscriptions are sufficient to pay the printer.” The subscription is put down at 50c. per annum, and all communications should be addressed to The Theosophical Publishing Company, Room 32, Haller Block, Seattle, Wash. This new magazine is the same size as the Vâhan, and is well managed and full of interesting paragraphs and news; we heartily rejoice over its nativity.
The New Californian, No. 6, contains articles from the pens of such well-known writers in the Society as W. Q. Judge, Dr. Jerome A. Anderson, and Miss Marie A. Walsh. It also reprints Annie Besant's farewell address at the Hall of Science.
Anti-Caste is the title of a minute monthly of quite a Theosophical character. It “advocates the Brotherhood of Mankind irrespective of colour and descent”, and champions the cause of the natives of all countries by collecting instances of glaring injustice done to the “blacks” by the “whites”, and commenting thereon. This undertaking deserves support, and we therefore have much pleasure in enabling our readers to become acquainted with it by copying the following notice.
“Terms: – Single copy, post free for one year, 1s. (25 cents). Copies for distribution sent gratis to subscribers of 1s. and upwards. All communications to be addressed to Catherine Impey, Street, Somersetshire (England). Subscriptions in aid of free distribution are earnestly invited.”
New Pamphlets. The Indian Section sends us a new Information for Strangers, somewhat resembling that of the European Section, but containing the Epitome of Theosophy, by W. Q. Judge, which has been so often reprinted, and will, we hope, still continue to be reprinted. Pamphlets on Brotherhood and The Objects of the T.S., by Bertram Keightley, are also to hand. These are all intended for distribution.
Our Budget.
The Building Debt will be extinguished from the receipts below, and the surplus placed to the credit of the Trustees for the upkeep of Headquarters in London. The complete account of the Building Fund will be issued on Annie Besant’s return from America.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Half surplus Dublin lecture, sent by Dublin Lodge | 6 | 1 | 6 |
| Half surplus from Debate | 48 | 16 | 9 |
| Additional Receipts from St. James’ Hall Lecture | 0 | 13 | 6 |
| Proceeds of meeting at Maidenhead (expenses paid by Miss F. H. Müller) | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 65 | 11 | 9 |
Working Women’s Club, Bow.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Christian | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| G. L. Morris | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| E. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| M. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Anon. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| X. | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 22 | 5 | 0 |
Annie Besant, Treasurer.
H.P.B. Memorial Fund.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| C. E. Parmelin | 0 | 14 | 0 |
| F. Montoliu | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| L. J. W. | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 4 | 14 | 0 |
France per Mons. Coulomb – frs. 34.90
Editorial Announcement.
Our readers will take interest in learning that the marriage of Dr. Archibald Keightley and Mrs. J. Campbell Ver Planck took place on November 25th.
No. 53 – January 1892
353 The Theosophical Society is in no way responsible for any opinions, in signed or unsigned articles, that appear in this Magazine. Nor does the Editor necessarily agree with the opinions expressed in signed articles.
The Time is Short.
As one by one the years roll swiftly by us, and the iron wheels of the Kali Yuga are rapidly nearing the fateful close of the first five thousand years of the cycle, the darkness deepens round us, and the strain becomes ever heavier. Evil were these closing years to be, our Teacher told us, and keen the struggle that would rage round the banner she planted in the name of Those who sent her. Physical nature would throb as in sympathy with the struggles of men, and the disturbances in the earthly kingdom of man would be as harsh and clanging chords supporting the sombre minor chant from the mental and spiritual planes. For “the soul of the world is weeping” as the Great Orphan Humanity cries aloud in the pangs of hunger, and yet unconsciously pushes away the patient Hands that hold out to it the bread it needs, the bread of the Wisdom-Religion that can alone satisfy the spiritual cravings of man. And the time is so short, for the cycle closes but six brief years hence (February 16th, 1898), and then three years of twilight – to brighten into dawn or to darken into night? Alas! the answer depends on the use made of these few years, and the instruments are so few and so imperfect!
For let us realise our position. We stand in one of those transition periods that see the death-throes of one Age and the birth-pangs of another. The Theosophical Society was founded in the very centre of the turmoil, that it might give fresh impulse to the spiritual aspirations of man, on the strengthening of which his whole future must depend. At this critical period it brings reinforcement to the spiritual 354 energies, faces the triumphant Materialism of the day, and closes with it in a death-and-life grapple, for the sovereignty of human thought during the coming Age. On the issue of that struggle through the next six years depends the tone of thought as the next century opens; if Theosophy can hold its own, if it can weld together even a small band of wholly devoted men and women, pledged to carry the work on over the threshold of the century, and to keep the Theosophical Society living and active through these years of storm, then the Twentieth Century will see its growth and its development, and the next Messenger, when he comes, will find, as H. P. Blavatsky desired, an agency through which to work, material ready to his hand, awaiting his arrival. H. P. Blavatsky had everything to do: to find the clay, to make the bricks, to lay the foundation, to raise the superstructure. Wise master-builder as she was, the task tried even her strong soul to the utmost of its powers. But, when she bade us farewell, she had the hope that the work done was firm enough to stand, and that her successor, at the close of the Twentieth Century, would find that work remaining as a sure and stable basis on which might be reared, without the trouble and the anguish she endured, a fair and noble temple for the spiritual instruction of man. In that hope she left us; it is for us to make the hope a reality.
Glancing backward over the past year, we find how fully justified was the foreboding with which she regarded it.
“Woe to us”, she wrote in December, 1890, “men and races born in the tail-end of the present and most dreadful cycle! Mystics and Theosophists, think that the world will be living for the next decade over a volcano. For the year 1891 is the eldest son of the last Septenary in the said cycle. On February 17th next [1891], will commence the last series of seven years which will close the first cycle of five thousand years of Kali Yuga – the ‘Black Age’ of the Hindu Brahmins.”
1891 has indeed been a year of storm and unrest, in the physical, political, social, and religious worlds.
All over the globe physical nature has been disturbed. In Western Europe the tempests have been more terrible and more frequent than any within the memory of the present generation: our Southern sea-ports have found their sea-fronts imperilled, and in some cases washed away, by the furious waves that have beaten upon them time after time; our inland towns have suffered heavily from the tempestuous gales. In Eastern Europe, Russia has been devastated by famine. In Asia, China has been desolated by famine and flood, while Japan has been laid waste by earthquake and volcano; and the seas have been thrown into huge billows by submarine explosions, and have dashed 355 over the decks of vessels volumes of boiling water, scalding the sailors as they fled from a phenomenon so new in their experience.
Here at home, Death has swept his scythe busily in the political and social world. The House of Commons has changed its face by the loss of such strong men as Charles Bradlaugh and the Irish “uncrowned king” Charles Stewart Parnell; while the death of Mr. Smith has taken a veteran from the stage. Dignitaries of the Church, royalties, nobles and literary men, have jostled each other as they have hurried down the road to the Styx, where old Charon’s boat must have been more than once crowded to swamping point with erstwhile notabilities.
Over Europe still broods the dark and threatening thunder-cloud, from which must flash, ere long, the red lightnings of war: an armed peace weighs heavy on the nations, wellnigh as burdensome in treasure, though not in life, as war itself could be. The Jewish exodus from Russia adds another dark line to the picture, and outgoing ships to the New World are laden with Jewish exiles, seeking fresh Fatherland beyond the seas.
In religious matters 1891 has seen, speaking generally, a widening out in the Churches among the more thoughtful, an increased readiness to assimilate new ideas. Theosophically, the year has been an important one. Midway in its course was definitely constituted the European Section, and the first Annual Convention was held at the European Headquarters, under the presidency of Colonel Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society. The Section has been growing steadily, with Mr. G. R. S. Mead as its General Secretary, but as Mr. Mead is sub-editor of this magazine as well as General Secretary of the European Section I cannot pay the Secretary, in these pages, the compliments he deserves. The holding of this Convention would have sufficiently marked 1891 for us, but its success was almost thrown into the shade in England by the extraordinary wave of interest in Theosophy that swept over the whole country during the late summer and autumn months, bringing tens of thousands to the knowledge of Theosophical teachings that had been only a name to them, or not even a name, before. Lecture halls have been crowded, literature has been eagerly purchased, the newspapers have opened their columns to prolonged discussions. The result of all this has been that enquiries have flowed in from every quarter – from as far afield as Yokohama, Erzeroum, Java, Johannisburg, and other unexpected spots – and the enquiries have been followed by study, and the study by growing tendency to accept the teachings of the Wisdom Religion.
In America, the year which had in its early days the most 356successful Convention yet held by the American Section of the Theosophical Society – a Convention hallowed by the last message sent to her pupils and friends by our Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, who thus closed her work on American soil as there also she began it – this same year had its closing months Theosophically gladdened by the most successful propagandist tour of our Brother William Q. Judge, in the States of the Far West. There he repeated the experience so familiar to us here, crowded halls, eager enquiries, press publicity, and he has laid on the Pacific Coast a good foundation for future work. As we look across the wide ocean that separates us, but does not divide, we see him standing there firm and strong, holding the American outposts for the Masters, as we are striving to hold for Them the European.
Enough of the Past. What of the Future, becoming the Present as we speak? To this question there is but one answer: Work. Our task is to make so deep an impress on the mind of the British nation, that, ere the cycle closes, the Theosophical view of things may have taken rank among the recognised opinions of the day – opinions that have to be reckoned with. We must so publish abroad the teachings of Theosophy that, reaching all, they may be fastened on by those who have reached the point of evolution at which they can be assimilated. Such men and women are to be found in every class of society, and we must therefore adopt every way of reaching them. Abstruse books for the highly educated minority; elementary manuals for the partially instructed; lectures for the careless crowd, attracted by curiosity; letters and articles in newspapers for those who will not seek, but must have knowledge brought to their very breakfast tables; tactful introduction of Theosophical thoughts in private conversation; patient interest shewn to strangers and enquirers; philanthropic agencies to prove the reality of the brotherhood by taking aid to the suffering; seizure of every opportunity to present the Theosophical criticism of life. And most important, because lying at the root of all, the increasing watchfulness which waits every opportunity in order to grasp it, the unflinching, though not boisterous assertion of Theosophical principles, the deliberate detachment from personal interests, because only those who are indifferent to all for themselves can be impartial in their judgment of themselves and devoted in their service of others. This is the spirit that must animate the pioneers of Theosophy in the Western World, if their mission is to be crowned with success; and the very life-breath of that spirit must be unwavering trust in the Masters, Who are the spring and guiding intelligence of the movement, and Whose more efficient 357 instruments we become as we forget ourselves in the service of the race, as we lose our selves to find the Self.
But surely in the minds of some of my readers will be rising the question: How comes it that the Editor of Lucifer can write an editorial dealing with the year 1891, and leave out of her review its most important event, the death of H. P. Blavatsky? On the physical plane her death was indeed a terrible blow, and the absence of her pen from these pages is a loss that nothing can repair. In many a crisis to come, also, the Society will sorely miss her courage, her energy, her wisdom. But in very truth to me, her pupil and grateful follower, the passing of H. P. Blavatsky is not so important an event as on the surface it may appear. Had she been less, her loss on the physical plane had been greater; but being what she was, one of the Great Souls, the tie between her and those she served and taught was on the higher plane where Death is not. H. P. B. was not her body, and when she cast aside an instrument too worn for further service, the cast-off body indeed perished, but H. P. B. passed on untouched. The pain of the loss on the physical plane, acute as it was and is, must be recognised by each of us as the weakness of our human personalities, so blinded by illusion that the absence of the body seems the absence of the Self. It is therefore a pain to be contemned and disregarded, as an inevitable accident indeed of our undeveloped nature, to be recognised as a weakness, not fostered as a beautiful sentiment. And here, to avoid misconstruction, let me say that I do not mean that we should thus treat the pain of loss in others, but only in ourselves. To others suffering the wrench of bereavement we should always shew the tenderest compassion and sympathy; it is to ourselves that we do well to be stern. As says the Voice of the Silence:
“Ere thou canst settle in Dnyan Mârga and call it thine, thy Soul has to become as the ripe mango fruit: as soft and sweet as its bright golden pulp for others’ woes, as hard as that fruit’s stone for thine own throes and sorrows, O Conqueror of Weal and Woe.”
How then should her pupils, remembering her teachings, contradict them by a mourning that exalts the lower above the higher nature, or cease to strive after a realisation of that unity which Death cannot rend nor Time destroy? They may fail, overpowered for awhile by the vivid sensations of the physical plane, but they will renew the struggle over and over again, until the lesson theoretically learned has become the habit of the life.
And so we pass into 1892, prepared to face its difficulties, to utilise its opportunities, to stand quietly, serenely, firm amid the whirl of its contending forces. A little army, encamped in a hostile country, we 358 must hold the post given us in charge until the relief guard comes. On each individually, as on all collectively, falls the responsibility of this great emprise. Our success depends on our loyalty, our unity, our exertion, and our love. We may conquer by argument: we can only win by Love. And our task is to win this Western World for the Wisdom Religion, so that the Brotherhood of Man in the Twentieth Century, may become a reality instead of a phrase.
A Bewitched Life
368
Universal Law.
Before entering upon the discussion of any subject it is well to define as accurately as possible the meaning of the terms employed. In debate this is all the more necessary, as it is usual for each party to commence an argument with ideas none too exact and also with the assumption that the word which may be the key to the whole debate is not only the same in its principal meanings to each side, but that it has also to each the same vague cloud of associations which give colour, if not form, to an idea.
Most arguments begin in selfishness, each disputant endeavouring to force upon the other his own particular view, without regard to the outlines of truth as they may appear from the stand-point of his opponent.
If at the start each partisan were to make a sincere effort to find the exact meaning attached by his adversary to the leading words or phrases used and to place himself mentally in his position, points of unity would be discovered, obscurities common to both minds would be recognised, and many a controversy that tends to bitterness and denser ignorance would be resolved into a comparison of intellectual results and mutual help along the rough pathway to knowledge.
These remarks are brought to the front because disputes without number have raged in which the key-word was law. Controversies over the natural and the so-called supernatural, over the possibility of miracles, over predestination and free will, have begun with prejudice and ended in ill-feeling. Theologians have fought with each other or with scientists, each party using the word “law” as if the idea it suggested was as definite as that attached to a simple numeral. Theists, atheists, pantheists, spiritualists and materialists have swelled the clamours of the fray; yet in most cases no serious effort is made to define the word, although it may be evident to a cool outsider that the opposing parties do not use the word in quite the same sense, and that the associations colouring the idea are widely different. We often find a variation in the sense as used by the same party at different times, an inconsistency which might have been escaped if an analysis of the idea had been attempted in the beginning.
If we turn to a dictionary we find a catalogue of the different senses in 369 which the word is used. These are the off-shoots or differentiations of the fundamental idea, which itself is not discussed, as this would not be within the province of a dictionary. We must analyse our own conceptions and trace them to their primitive source within the mind.
If anyone is called upon suddenly to define the word “law”, the vague group of associations called up at the instant in that person's mind is an index of his usual line of thought. The average man, with a mind running but little upon science or theology, will think of the legislative machinery by which society is organised and of the written rules arbitrarily created to express, as they may, the conceptions either of one or of many minds of what is right or expedient.
If he keeps his mind on the subject he will think of some vague underlying principle of justice which these laws endeavour to embody in defining the relationships between man and man.
The net impression left, even after considerable thinking, will be of something largely arbitrary in its nature and uncertain in its origin.
If the man is a theologian, he will think of law as the expression of the will of some supreme being. He will think of this will as manifested in two ways. First, as arbitrarily impressed upon the ultimate particles or atoms of matter, which will thenceforward behave toward each other in certain fixed and invariable modes until some further special emanation of supreme will. This he will consider to be the origin of laws of nature. Second, as announced verbally by the direct inspiration of some prophet, or through a divine amanuensis in the shape of a book or epistle writer. By this means it is said that the moral law has been promulgated. This moral law is said to have been changed more than once by the repeal of old edicts and the issuing of new, the latest code being termed the new or “Christian dispensation”.
The theologian claims that the animal and vegetable kingdoms are governed by fixed laws established at the time of their creation, which was the result of thought and contrivance. The life principle placed in vegetable and animal forms, together with whatever intelligence and consciousness the latter may possess, he claims to be evanescent with the body, no matter how perfect in its way this life may be, or how harmonious with its surroundings or beneficial in its influence during its material manifestation.
The conscious life placed in each human being is said to be a matter of special creation, at or about the time of the development of the body in which it is placed. This life or soul is said to be immortal and indestructible, however imperfect it may be, either through the fault or purpose of the maker, or its own, and however inharmonious with its surroundings or evil in its influence during its visible life.
This view of the origin and government of the universe, in short of universal law, involving arbitrary and special acts at every step, is the personal extreme, and may be called “The Great Man Theory”.
370 If, on the other hand, our definer is an absolute materialist, he will start with a trinity of force, space and matter. He will claim that law is a manifestation of certain tendencies inhering from all eternity in the atoms of matter, which combine and move in certain modes, owing to fixed methods of attraction. These combinations he asserts result in others still more complex, presenting finally the phenomena of intelligence and volition. With the fading of the material form he claims that thought and consciousness disappear for ever like cloud wreaths in the sky. The universe, to him, is like a barrel of dice rolling over and over, grinding out, within certain limits, almost endless combinations. Life from this standpoint is but one of these, a complex relation of force and matter, the flicker of a sunbeam on the tide of time. This is the extreme view from the stand-point of the fixed and impersonal, as contrasted with the theological extreme of the arbitrary and personal. It may be called “The Machine Theory”.
The average scientist may be found drifting somewhere between these extremes, tending in some things to one and in some things to the other according to disposition and education.
We have here four different mental attitudes in reference to the idea of law.
The first or unphilosophical, is that of the average person. It arises from the habits of common language, in which reference is made most commonly to the variable and imperfect attempts of men to frame in words rules of action which shall harmonize with environment and evolutionary principles. The group of impressions belonging to this type involve a large measure of the arbitrary, a maximum of imperfection, and a minimum, perhaps a total absence of any quality which may be called universal.
The mind operating, as it does, with a material tool, the brain, is influenced by material conditions, hence tends invariably to follow lines of least resistance, for the same reason that water flows down hill or along channels which it has previously worn. The mind of the theological philosopher, the second in our classification, follows the usages of common thought and simply magnifies the thinking principle, with some of the operations of which he is familiar, but of whose nature he is profoundly ignorant. He goes further, transcends all possible experience and even all forms of revelation accepted by himself, by divorcing it from any medium or substratum of any kind whatever. Unless he inclines to what he will usually stigmatize as pantheism, he will demand for the universe a soul which needs no trace of anything, however formless or transcendental, corresponding to a body.
The materialist, in like manner, with habit of thought formed in the observation of the external machinery of nature, finds it easier to form a superficial conception of the universe by extending his mechanical ideas blindly into the unknown, and making of the whole, a body, an automaton, without a trace of a soul.
371 The fourth class is represented by the average scientific thinker; his habits of thought and work incline him to the materialistic view, but he is too logical to accept that extreme; his intuitions and his intellect keep him from the opposite. He may be found anywhere between them, sometimes approaching one and sometimes the other, yet in most cases aware of his inconsistencies.
Herbert Spencer has done a great work in practical philosophy, but in his ambitious attempts to perfect what has been proudly termed “The Synthetic Philosophy”, he has attempted to ignore inevitable shortcomings. He has learned a trick from the theologian, who like the Spanish bull fighter, provides a retreat for himself into which he nimbly skips when hard pressed by the horns of a dilemma. The theological shelter is labelled “Inscrutable Divine Mystery”. Mr. Spencer’s fence is placarded “THE UNKNOWABLE”.
Such devices are essential to champions who cannot afford a single overthrow, but leave the spectator dissatisfied. We must at some time reach the limits of our powers on this plane of existence, but these are not of necessity where it is convenient to place them. To change the simile; as we look to the horizon the line where earth and sky seem to meet appears the limit of possible exploration. As we advance it recedes, and even on this limited earth the jumping-off place is not so near as in childhood we are apt to imagine.
An analysis of the German metaphysical schools would require far more time and learning than the writer possesses. The four classes referred to may be taken as fairly representing the popular thought of European civilization in reference to the principles of universal law. I may recapitulate them as follows.
First, the orthodox church theologians, representing the extreme personal conception.
Second, the materialists, holding the opposite.
Third, the majority of scientists, holding mixed opinions and tentative in their speculations.
Fourth, the great majority of men, having no real opinions, to whose minds the word “law”, brings up a jumble of impressions derived from police reports, Sunday sermons and a few stray phrases of popular science.
The net result is certainly unsatisfactory; let us see if any analysis will lead us toward the truth and whether any other line of thought is possible. I must condense in the fewest words.
The search for the origin of universal law, or the law of the universe, is an investigation of the principle of action, or in other words of cause and effect. Action must be taken in its widest sense; not merely as visible action or motion, but as a tension or tendency to act, potential motion or energy. Gravitation for example is as active and ever present in holding bodies against the earth as in moving them toward it. The two 372fundamental principles of the physical world are, gravitation, that is attraction broadly speaking, or the tendency to occupy identical space, and its opposite, exclusion, or the tendency to occupy different portions of space. This last is obviously revealed in the quality of hardness, or the elasticity of solids and gases. The first is the embodiment of the love of united existence, love in general, the motive of altruism. The second is the manifestation of the love of personal or separate existence, the motive of selfishness.
Without the first of these laws the universe would be disintegrated: without the latter it would disappear in a point. Particles of matter without these common manifestations of being would be to each other non-existent.
Law means direction and limitation of action. Limitation or constraint must come either from within or without. Limitation from within means limitation due to the character of the centre from which the force emanates. If this is a self-conscious centre it will appear to itself to act with absolute free will. Limitation from without will be felt as constraint. Constraint from without, whether by attraction or repulsion, implies some community of nature between the constraining and the constrained body. This holds good on all planes of action. The genuine desire for any form of knowledge proves that somewhere within is at least the undeveloped possibility of its attainment. The true unknowable is only that of which we cannot even dream or form the shadow of a wish to know.
The most absolute human despot of which the mind could conceive would still be limited by the qualities of his own nature, from which he could no more escape thon he could climb out of time and space. The theologians who framed the Westminster Catechism tried to define God in a sentence commencing with an assertion of the unlimited and ending with as many limitations as they could pack into it.
Turn and twist as we may, we can form no conception of personality without limitation, of being without law, of law without will, of will without consciousness. Will and consciousness form intelligence. We must broaden and deepen our conceptions of these things, realize that these qualities are all aspects of the same thing, that they are absolutely universal, that they are to be found in the world around us in all grades of manifestation from the most simple and undifferentiated to the most complex, and that we ourselves are a reflection of and identical with this great system.
Mr. Spencer and his followers have done a good work in developing the philosophy of evolution and making us familiar with the idea. Their labours have been unselfish and prompted by a love of truth. They have prepared the world for the grander conceptions of evolution, for that true synthetic philosophy underlying both science and religion, which is now coming to us from the secret recesses of the East. Beginning before the modern evolutionist can frame even a speculation, it carries us, through the visible and manifested world on into regions unknown to modern 373 science. It invites the co-operation of exact science within its own realm and challenges its criticism. Can any of the degenerate offshoots of the old Wisdom Religion do the same?
As the patriarch of old saw in his dream a ladder extending to heaven with angels descending and ascending, so we may gain a vision of emanations of power and light descending from the infinite heights to the most concrete and material forms of matter and life, ascending again through ever expanding cycles of light and consciousness, till form and personality seem lost in a blinding radiance.
The materialist may sneer at what he will call “dreams and superstition”, or, “exploded fancies of the past”, and go back to tinker at his automata. The orthodox churchman may raise his piping cry of “pantheism”, and return to his crumbling temple to bow before the painted image of the Calvinistic God. Those who have seen the vision will take courage and press on.
The Septenary in Nature
Karma and Reincarnation
385
The Dream of Ravan.
The Three Mirages.
Of the mirages which attracted thy observation on thy first entrance into the desert, and which again beset thy path after thou hadst forsaken the cavern of the Devas, and plunged into the silent wilderness, two have been already interpreted in thy own description. That blue Mriga-jala, deer-water, which mocks the weary hart, and deceives the human traveller in the wilderness, typifies, indeed, those false rivers of delight, and delusive hopes of happiness, which the world spreads afar off before the longing pilgrim who is a wayfarer in this wilderness, to lure him on in the perpetual pursuit of an unreal content and joy, but which ever vanish as we approach, and mock the fainting soul in the very moment of expected fruition.
That white mirage which built up the Gandharva city of fairy palaces in the clouds, to melt again like mist into the air, is the emblem of that delusion which besets the blinded soul, and instead of staying at home and attending to itself, seeking its satisfaction there only where abiding peace is to be found, in itself, in seeking to know itself, and to recover its own true relation, a participation in the divine nature, urges it for ever to depart far from itself, to forget itself, and its own high birthright; and build up for its solace vain projects in the distance – magnificent fairy castles and palaces in the clouds, or in the land of dreams, which ever dissolve as soon as built, and leave the soul in disappointment to begin afresh.
But the Kála Vivarta, that flittering black mirage, or mirage of Time, has a more special signification. This beset thee at the outset, to denote that in all the events that were to follow in thy dream – in all the visions which were shown, and all which in relation thereto may yet be called up before thee, as well as in all the voices of interpretation which shall be uttered to thee – Time shall stand in a reversed relation, its unities and successions be broken, its distinction confounded. The far, far future shall become present or past, the past become future, the present be pictured as yet to come or long gone by. All distinction and succession shall be forgotten and lost in an eternal present. Without this indication from the black mirage neither the dream nor its interpretation would be intelligible.
386 But such a confusion and total reversion were impossible, if these distinctions were in their own nature real and eternal; and here we at length reach the profound and enduring signification of the mirages, which thou, O Titan! art, perhaps, as yet scarcely prepared to receive.
The blue mirage, which operates in space, and alters its relations, which presents the lake water as close at hand, and then withdraws it afar off; for ever deluding the eye with imaginary and ever-changing distances, typifies the temporary, delusive, and unreal nature of Space itself. Space has no real existence to Spirit. It is merely an order in which Spirit, when bound in the fetters of the intellect, shut up in the cell of the soul, and barred and bolted securely within the prison of the body, is compelled to look out piecemeal on True Being, which is essentially one, in a broken, multitudinous, and successive way. Space is a mere How. It is not a What. It is a method of analysis, an intervalling, or ruling off, to enable the multitudinous figures by which the intellect is compelled to express diffusively the totality which is one, but which, from its own now fractional nature, it cannot contemplate in unity, to be severally set down.
Time, too, is a How, and not a What; a method of analysis, intervalling, or ruling off, which intellect employs to enable it to contemplate in successive parts the one eternal divine Thought, when broken into fractional successive intellections; and the one eternal divine Sentiment, when revealed to limited natures in history, as a succession of broken events. And this is what is indicated by the black mirage: that to Spirit, Time has no real existence; it is only a necessary method and instrument of finite intellect.
What the blue image indicates as to Space, what the black as to Time, the white mirage, with its Gandharva fairy cities in the clouds, ever changing their form and dissolving into nothing, typifies as to the multitudinous diversified forms of Matter in the universe. They have no real existence. They are the multitudinous, transient phenomena thrown off in Space and Time, by that which is ever one, constant, unchanging, and hath its being outside and beyond both Space and Time – enfolding both: the current hieroglyphic writing in which it reveals itself, and in which alone it can be read by Spirit fallen into finite intelligence, when it hath lost its pristine dignity and purity of nature.
And the same doctrine is applicable to individual personalities, which all arise in and re-subside, like waves, into the infinite impersonal ocean of Being; but for the contemplation of this mystery thou art not yet fully prepared, O Titan! nor has it any type in the three images, which typify only Space, Time, and multitudinous divided Matter. To sum up. To Spirit, or True Being, there is no Space, no Time, no diversified Matter, no multitudinous Personality, no successive Thought, no historical Event.
True Being is universal, uniform, constant, unchanging, and eternal, 387 and is termed Sach-Chid-Ânanda-Ghana, a compacted Being, Thought, Joy. Being culminating to consciousnss; conscious Thought returning and entering into Being, with an eternal Joy. Being worketh eternally in the depths, but knoweth not itself. Thought, generated in the eternal centre, giveth forth the Great Utterance, and calleth out I am Brahm. Being becometh thus revealed unto itself in Thought, and between the Thought and the Being an eternal Joy ariseth: and these three are one Ghana, or solidarity of eternal life, filling all things, and yet minuter than an atom. That is the true Jñeya, or object of wisdom; of it Krishna sayeth in the Gítá, Lecture XIII.: –
Without beginning and supreme – ever Brahm, |
And thus is this inconceivable True Being described by Mukunda Rája, in the Viveka Sindhu, Lect. III. For, after first noticing the duality of Soul and God:
In the sky of Own-Form [or True Being], in that which is devoid of property, ariseth an utterance of “Jiv-Eshvara”, “Living creature and Lord” [or, “Soul and God”]. The eradication of this dual utterance from that place of unity, thou art to effect by self-realisation alone.
And then, laying down ecstatic concentration to be the great remedy for this disease called life: –
Wherefore this Samadhi, or Self-Concentration, is the divine tree of healing for those suffering under the disease of existence; by it is ended the anguish and the pain which belong to pleasure in sensible objects.
He proceeds to describe True Being, the fountain of all existence: –
That which, distinct from the Power-wheels [or Power-spheres], is all sense, without parts – that immaculate Own-Bliss, understood to be Para-Brahm, or most high Brahm,
388 That wherein this trinity or three-fold relation – the seer, the object of sight, and the [medium or process of] vision, disappears, that know to be supreme Brahm, devoid of opposition.
That wherein this trio – the knower, the [medium or process of] knowledge, and the thing to be known, does not exist – that, my son, know to be supreme Brahm, indeed.
If we would denominate it knowledge, there is there no knowing; if we would call it ignorance, there is there no not knowing; if we would term it nonentity, behold, it is a wonderful hidden treasure, without beginning, being even from all eternity.
Nonenity is nought. The opinion of those who contend for [Brahm being] nought is vile. Happy they who in the world understand this, knowers of Brahm.
If we say it is, how are we to present it? If we say it is not, how are we to get rid of it? In a word, this Brahm, let those know to whom it belongs.
It is what stirreth him who is asleep, what awakeneth him who is stirred, what causeth him who is awake to feel [pleasure and pain], but it is itself without act.
As the heart of the crystal rock has a solidarity without interval, so supreme Brahm is one compact mass of consciousness.
Or again, it is all hollow, like the æthereal space; pervasible, yet apart from the pervasion; beautifully shining with its own light; itself alone !
Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Maheshvara, when they become exhausted carrying on their respective operations [of creation, preservation, and destruction], then use the house of rest – namely, Own Brahm. [These active energies no longer working, subside into Brahm – the sabbatical form of Divine Being, in which there is no action.]
That wherein is neither science nor nescience, which cannot be compared to any other thing; which is to be known to itself alone; that know to be the divine science, the supreme Brahm, Own-Form.
Which even Sarv-Eshvara, or the All Lord himself, if he assume the egoity of knowing,[14] even he knoweth not the furthest limits of that Own-Form.
Wherefore egoity vanishes there, imagination also disappears, that Brahm itself alone comprehendeth its own Self-Realisation.
After comprehending and pervading a thousand universes, within and without, the Supreme Brahm Own-Form is ever entire, without residue [or deficiency], and without interval [or separation of parts].[15]
As the clouds melt into the æthereal space and cease to be, so in Own-Form the film of Máiá; when that is dissolved, wholly Brahm [or the absolute] alone is.
Recurring again in Lecture V. to the duality of the Soul and God, into which this primordial unity is separated, he calls the former Thou, the latter That in this isolation, and thus he describes the divine principle which he calls That: –
Without the word That, the Lord the word Thou (individual soul) hath no subsistence; hear then again regarding the word That.
389 He who is Param Âtmâ, or Supreme Spirit; Maham Vishnu, or the Great Pervader; Âdi Purusha, the Primordial Soul; Bhagavana, the Glorious One; Sach-chid-ânanda-ghana, the solidarity of Being, Thought, and Joy in one, He has been declared unto thee.
He who is the All-Spirit, the All-Witness, the All-Lord, who is present within the bosom of every creature, who is never indifferent to his own servants.
That God without beginning and subtile [inapprehensible or unsearchable], who exhibits this universe, which is not; who again hideth it, as a thing departed, though still in the same place;
Who, without ears, heareth; without eyes, seeth; without tongue, tasteth every flavour;
Who, without feet, walketh; without hands, taketh and giveth; who by a wish alone emancipates the soul;
Who, being close, is yet afar off; standing afar off, is yet within the soul; through whose power the organs are quickened to perform their own offices;
As the one sun shineth in every country, so the same Supreme Spirit illumineth every creature – life, or soul.
This delicate world That is a body of pure intelligence – without form, pervading all things; yet for the sake of his own worshippers, assuming an external shape.
There the When is an eternal Now, |
A universal “That-I” – [So-Ham] – impersonal merging into personal; personal returning into impersonal, and feeling its identity with it.
But True Being is broken by the prison of Mâyâ into a multitudinous phenomenal development, and it is then only it can be contemplated by Spirit, become fractional itself, and fallen into finite intellect. As it is sung by the virgin poetess of Alandi: –
A change, a mirage ariseth in True Being; |
In this evolution, which is phenomenal only, the seed germinates into a thousand roots and shoots; the monad of light breaks into ten thousand rays. The sphere is spun out into an infinite thread; the lump of gold becomes broken into ten millions of jewels of infinite variety of make and pattern.
The Sat, Being, or substance of the Primordial Triad, is spread out into the phenomena of infinite material universes.
The one central Chit, or Consciousness, into infinite personalities and lives.
The unity That-I [So-Ham], which is the experience of the original Consciousness, becomes dissevered first into That and Thou, and then into infinite I’s, and Thou’s and That’s.
The eternal Thought united with that Consciousness, into infinite successive cognitions, and systems of science, philosophy and literature.
The Ânanda, its harmonious Joy, into infinite tones of sentiment and passion, which produce the result of tragic history.
390 The infinite Here is rolled out into Space.
The eternal punctual Now into successive time.
And the divine, eternal, and round life of True Being becomes evolved and extended, and rolled out, as it were, into successive history.
And that prismatic Mâyâ itself. . . . .
But I fear, said the Rishi, seeing the bewildered faces of his audience and feeling he was getting beyond their comprehension, I fear I begin to grow unintelligible.
From a Theosophist’s Diary.
“There is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind”, says the English Opium Eater; “a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscription on the mind; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever.”
Niagara Falls, August 17th. – How powerfully do familiar scenes recall to life memories we had supposed long since dead. What a strange power there is even in individual trees, rocks, or road-stretches to re-awaken in us the memory of some former trivial occurrence even to the smallest minutiæ of face, form, or the exact words of a conversation. For years these may have slumbered and been as dead to us – for, if there is no relation between us and a certain thing, we are practically dead to it. And although to our outward consciousness many a memory, not only of this, but of previous lives, is dead and forgotten, there is really “no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind”; and only a certain stimulus is needed to awaken old associations and we “re-collect”.
Suddenly a soft whisper of the wind, the merry laughter of a brook, or the faint odour of a night-flower, will call up vividly before the mind all the minor and unimportant associations of some former period of our life. . . . . . .
I arrived here last night, and after a dinner of vegetables (of which plenty and in great variety may be had at this time of year in most American hotels), I strolled forth to be alone with my thoughts and the thundering presence of the falling river.
The heavy vibrations of the atmosphere seemed to form themselves with a weird rhythm into these words: –
I stood at night on the edge of the world, |
Wandering up through the Canadian National Park, I watched the 391 huge, dim form of the river rolling with an indescribable majesty into the abyss, and as I gazed my thoughts went back to a visit of three years previous.
An eddy of the breeze bore upon its wings the fresh odour of moisture-laden air, and the damp, cool spray sweeping over my face, as it had done three years before, woke in my memory the same associations and the same train of thought that had marked my former visit. On that occasion I was still asleep – spiritually asleep; dead to the possibilities within me – dead to the grand knowledge of Universal Brotherhood – dead to all the elevating truths contained in a knowledge of Esoteric Religion. My only religion was that which Shelley has described as the “twin sister of selfishness”. I was totally unconscious of the existence of underlying truths, and only the lower and intellectual parts of my nature were alive. I was three parts a corpse, and was of course unaware of the fact.
This chance gust of wind that flung its delicate moisture in my face brought with it the key to unlock sad memories. Instantly I recollected standing for over an hour watching the “falling ocean” and shuddering in frightened awe at the vast power, seemingly only that of dead matter. Outside of myself, with an absolute existence, it was merciless, and knew only inexorable Law as its God. I feared it and the power it represented, and I was afraid of nature !
Not then had I learned to feel in those musical vibrations – as I now do – the great pulse of the Universe throbbing with the same life that made my heart beat faster as I looked and trembled. Not then, as now, did I know that there was only One Life, manifested on different planes with varying degrees of consciousness. The macrocosm and the microcosm – one organisation with different forms – all this was a mystery to me.
At that time my soul and thought were writhing in untold misery and despair, as I strove daily to propitiate that vast delusion of Personality – a whimsical, capricious, anthropomorphic giant, a powerful, despotic, extension of a human being – God. A God who was Love, and at the same time an angry and a jealous God. One who, while worshipped as the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, would still on occasions turn the ordered course of events and answer prayers. A God whose “worshippers unsheathe the sword of his revenge, when grace descended, confirming all unnatural impulses, to sanctify their desolating deeds; and frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross o'er the unhappy earth”.
Oh! it was a vain and miserable struggle. I felt that “virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty” were the only laws of life to be followed; “that they alone can give the bliss worthy a soul that claims its kindred with eternity” – and yet in the narrow dogmas of my religion I sought in vain for peace, hope, or comfort, and had long since ceased to expect from them any satisfactory or even plausible solution of life's problems and mysteries.
I remember well how I stood gazing, lost in wonder, over the surging 392 mass of racing waters – watching the deep, deep green in the central depths of the horse-shoe fall, and thinking to myself with a shiver, that not a thousand, nay not even a million, Niagaras could cool the fierce fires of hell, where so many struggling, weeping, despairing human beings were to be consigned for eternity by the God of the religion to which I was an unwilling adherent.
All the misery I then suffered comes back to me as I again stand and listen to the roar of the cataracts. The imme asurable despair that swept over my soul as I felt I could never love such a God, that I could never be frightened into heaven, and that therefore my only alternative lay in the blazing tortures of a localised volcano, where I should live for ever in death – for “their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched”.
And as the wind rose above the roar of the angry waters and whirled the heavy vapours through the listening air, it seemed to me that the songs it sings with such ineffable sadness, and indeed the whole music of the rolling world, sounded like a dirge for the gross injustice that is heaped on mankind by the misleading dogmas of exoteric religions with a personal Deity at their head.
“Rough wind, that moanest loud, |
As these thoughts came into my soul, I realised with deep-felt thankfulness the depths that Theosophy had illumined, the debt we owe H.P.B., and the grand and God-like work before us in the raising of humanity, and helping all with our best and most unselfish love. . . .
There are moments in life when certain truths suddenly seem to lose their old familiar form and to flash through the soul with a new and irresistible force. With a clearness of meaning never before apparent, they reveal the imme asurable depths hitherto concealed or minimised by a too familiar form of words.
There are also moments in our lives, when the voice of our mother nature speaks to us in tones of ineffable sweetness, and throbbing through our whole being makes us vibrate with a sympathy unfelt before – perhaps deemed impossible.
It is in moments such as these that we advance perceptibly, and often cover at a bound, so to speak, distances that without such inspiration we might have taken years to toil painfully over.
On these occasions many a difficult point is made clear, many a problem solved; struggles are turned into victories, and the dense vapours of 393 doubt and fear swept away. Truths that have already perhaps been apprehended by the intellect are suddenly made apparent and irresistibly obvious to the soul. The “eye” knowledge gives place to the intuitional teaching of the heart, and we advance a step.
Coburg, Ontario, August 21st. – Last night there was a dance in the hotel ball-room. The gay music struck, as often before, a minor chord in my breast, and, “shunning noise of foolish crowds”, I wandered out through the cool, tree-lined streets and made my way down to the shore of the lake. I was sad, because as I passed the open door of the ball-room I had caught sight of several brothers and sisters in whom I took a special interest, as showing signs of spiritual awakenings – awakenings which, alas, were being gradually smothered again by the whirl of selfish pleasure common to a summer resort.
Naturally, this made my heart bleed for them; they were indeed, in one sense of the word, more or less strangers to me, but in a far deeper and truer sense they were my own kith and kin, and I loved them.
If a man loves others with a true, deep and unselfish love, he in reality loves himself in the best meaning of the word; for the love spent on them will return to himself twofold and in them he loves a part of himself.
Low over the cloudless horizon rose the summer moon and tipped with fairest silver the crests of the waves as they raced on and fell with sad laughter on the shingle at my feet. There was no other sound in the still, beautiful night. Only the soft whispers of the lake breeze floating in the silver sheen and the rattle of the round stones under my feet.
Carelessly I stooped and picked up a flat-shaped stone and threw it across the surface of the lake. It struck the water on its face, and with considerable force went skimming away over the crests of the waves in succession.
I stood watching, and noted curiously enough that here was an analogy to our existence – an imperfect, but still a striking one. Each bound was a lifetime, determined in its character by the speed and height acquired from the last wave, and only modified to some extent by the speed and angle of the next wave. Thus our Karma acquired in each preceding life is modified slightly by the circumstances among which it brings us.
Finally, the stone loses its wearisome existences in the deep, deep rest of the great waters – Nirvâna! All the stone could be aware of was that some power infinitely greater than itself had hurled it thus by chance into existence, and bringing the Unknown down to its own standard it would imagine this First Cause to be a stone similar to itself, though infinitely greater and more powerful.
394 Here, perhaps, we see the error of the exoteric church. Feeling within them the Kingdom of God, they think they must have a creator like unto, and at the same time immeasurably greater than, themselves, with the result that they reduce Law and Truth to a personal idea and a “bundle of obvious contradictions”.
Meanwhile the great moon rose higher and her disc grew smaller and more silvery. In the ghost-like trees along the shore whispered the gentlest breeze imaginable, and her syren songs woke in me mingled feelings of joy and pain.
Irresistibly I felt and knew that the life manifested all round me was the same that throbbed in my own veins and pulse, differing only in degree, not in essence – either in advance of or below me, but still the same one life.
With infinite strength of purpose in my soul I felt one great wish burn through my being, to find relief only in tears. Oh! that this sense of separateness could be destroyed, and that all my brothers and sisters – not in yonder ball-room only, but in the entire world – could sing together in one inextinguishable anthem: –
“We all labour together, transmitting the same charge in succession, |
The moon rose higher into the deep, purply blacks of the sky, and only the night wind, leaving its harp strings for a moment in the tree-tops, blew across my face and gave answer: “Wait, wait, wait”. And the waves, as they “fled over the yellow sands with silver feet”, responded “Patience, patience, patience”, and deep down in my own breast whispered the spirit, “Wait – patience, work !”
Wednesday. – I have been reading Lucifer for half-an-hour, and in connection with the noble plan of that Light-Bearer to so many weary and despairing hearts, a thought struck me forcibly.
The large majority of readers of Lucifer in the West are, in the real meaning of the word, beginners on the Path. Many are not even that – but read simply from curiosity. Hundreds are hovering round waiting for more practical hints, not as to occult development so much as for the daily life of a Theosophist – wondering, hoping, waiting, but not yet working. To many of these, doubtless, a great obstacle is the somewhat vague character of the general instructions for real beginners. Those who are only half-hearted in the matter are turned aside and lose interest, while others, who are sufficiently awake spiritually to recognise the truth in Theosophy, and yet wanting in true wisdom, may break themselves to pieces on the rocks of Hatha Yoga for want of a guide and guardian.
395 It occurred to me that it would not be amiss for the guidance or earnest-minded beginners that those who, while not by any means Gurus, are still more advanced in practical Theosophy, should give their individual experiences of daily life. That one should tell without self-praise what he has been enabled to give up for the cause or for self-development; in how far it is reasonable and right to give up earthly advantages in business, etc., for the real good of self or others. That others should describe individual practices as to their daily routine, not leaving out such important details as those of diet, exercise, recreation, and so forth.
Others might give valuable hints and helps as to various methods of practising meditation, concentration, strengthening of will-power, altruism, and so on.
Certainly the T.S. is not formed for the development of occult powers latent in us – such development should be merely a necessary corollary, not an aim – but details regarding the experiences of our sorrowing, suffering, struggling brothers, would be of infinite value to many an aspiring disciple.
The common experiences of life come home with so much force when they appeal to us as identical with our own. Even the most trivial circumstance will assume an importance wholly out of proportion to its real and actual value, when we feel that it has also been our own experience. In the same way the knowledge that there are so many others denying themselves and living lives of self-sacrifice around us, is a vast and noble stimulus to many waverers who may be waiting simply for an example to give them the necessary courage to make a beginning.
Especially is this true of isolated Theosophists, who stand alone and have no encouraging examples to strengthen and help them on.
Lucifer, with such an addition, would be even more of a light-bearer, as well as a comfort and peace-bearer, than it is now.
Many, for instance, have been so long accustomed to animal food that they are unable to do without it and at the same time keep their usual degree of health. These ask, naturally enough – “Shall I nevertheless give up animal food – for me not a pleasure, but a necessity – and accept what little suffering is involved as a helpful thorn in the flesh?” There are many such details that would occur to the practical Theosophist as of infinite value to unstable beginners.
Being called away this evening, while I was reading in the drawing-room, I left the Voice of the Silence lying on the chair. I was detained over an hour, and on my return I found a young man, with whom I was slightly acquainted, sitting with the book on his knee, and evidently in deep thought.
I approached him and entered into conversation. He had been 396 considerably moved by the dazzling truth of the advice, as well as by the deep poetry that gleams from every page of the “Golden Precepts”.
A long and interesting talk helped to deepen the impression made, and next morning he accompanied me on a few visits to sick people in the neighbourhood.
For the first time in his life, he told me, he experienced that deep joy which can only arise from the losing of self in others. That night he left the hotel with a book I lent him, and with my earnest hope that his awakening may be real and progressive.
The Western Theosophy and the Duality of Being
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Dhyâna.
Theosophic students who desire to develope their psychic faculties should, before they begin their spiritual career, be well informed of the difficult Path that has to be trodden. There is no royal road to reach the goal. Wealth, caste, intellectuality, education, position in society, have no claim on this priceless treasure, for the poorest man may attain to it, provided that he has the necessary qualifications. The pure-minded persevering individual who continues unswervingly in the Path may, if not in this incarnation, then in some subsequent birth, attain this supremely blissful condition. If there is anything that is imperatively required of the student, it is a life of Altruism. The desire to be emancipated from the thraldom of passions should be ever present in the mind of the neophyte, and actuated with this desire, he should, standing on the basis of practical morality, cultivate Samâdhi. But the psycho-physical process of concentration should not be aimed at by those who aspire to Nirvânic bliss. The attenuation of passion is to be achieved only by constant practice and observation of precepts, and by the concentration of the Thinking Principle on the psycho-spiritual plane. It is said that Dhyâna launches the neophyte into the Nirvânic stream, and once launched there he has to move on by his exertions alone, to conquer or die. External material armaments, prayer to a Divine Being, or reliance on a Personal God, will be of no help to him in his fight with Mârâ and his hosts. The Great Ensnarer cannot be vanquished by the man of passionate, lustful and low thoughts: only the pure-minded, reflecting, persevering and courageous soul can confront Mârâ. Before the student enters the arena and casts down the gauntlet, he should be sure that he is standing on firm ground, and that he has a sharp sword in his hand, that the sharpening stone is with him and that he has sufficient courage in him to meet the foe in single combat. If the Yogi or neophyte is to conquer his lower nature he should stand on the firm ground of Sila, and standing thereon he should wield the sword of Prajna (wisdom), having first sharpened it on the stone of Samâdhi (concentration), and thus raising it with the mighty hand of Virya (energy), slay the terrible Ensnarer. Philistine as Mârâ is, he can be slain by the pure-minded David, provided that he has in his hand the sling of righteousness. The desire for sensual gratification must be crushed and destroyed, and this can be done only by the observance of a life of strict morality. A strict moral life is one thing, and a life of asceticism is another, and to discriminate one from the other, the neophyte should strive to get Prajna (wisdom). The Path of Moderation, the Middle Way (Majjhima Patipadâ) is essential. If 402 not guided by Prajna he is sure to drift off to some sandbank of thought and there remain without further progress. The observance of a code of moral precepts does positive good, in that the yearning for carnal pleasure is stayed; and if the cultivation of Prajna proceeds simultaneously therewith, it will keep the mind of the student free and unprejudiced, and will have a dynamic effect in keeping the mind further from falling into erroneous and false beliefs. Leading a pure life in the hope of getting a better incarnation is not to be recommended, but blessed is he who pledges his life to the service of Humanity. “He who leads a pure life, and lives in the hope of working for Humanity, his life is one of supreme blessedness” says the immortal Buddha Ghosha in his Visuddhi Mârga, that jewel-box par excellence of Buddhist Philosophy.
The moral Path that the student has to tread, will be full of obstacles and difficulties. He will be confronted, in the most unexpected way, by the messengers of Mârâ, who will try to lead him from that Path, and he should therefore be on his guard that he does not fall into the company of the unholy, sensual and selfish, for their very magnetism is enough to entrap him. Unholy association should be scrupulously avoided, for it leads the neophyte to perdition. The great lesson that our Lord inculcated during his ministry of 45 years was to avoid the asat purusha. “Associate with the pure-minded, hear the good Law, reflect thereon and walk in the Path”, was the key-note in all the discourses that he preached to Humanity.
The next important step that the neophyte has to take is that of meditation. However pure he may be, if he is careless and does not want to spiritualize his thoughts, there is little hope of his progression in the Nirvânic Way. He who is satisfied with the pure life that he leads and does not want to concentrate and practise Samâdhi, remains stationary in the Path of spirituality, and it is therefore essential that the effort should be made in Samâdhi, if he is to proceed on in his spiritual evolution.
Students of Yoga are warned not to be in the company of those who use intoxicants, for their very aura is hostile to them, their very exhalations poison the atmosphere and bring the most malignant elementals into activity. For the same reason other sensual places should be avoided. Those who wallow in the mire of sensuality are dead to all spiritual influences, their nature has become identified with the lower forms of elementals, which constrain them to continue in their vicious lives. The more a neophyte spiritualizes himself by a life of celibacy, strict morality and concentration, the more is he susceptible to evil influences; and he should be on his guard that he does not associate with the morally depraved.
The senses play an important part in this world of sorrow, and the candidate for adeptship should know that unless they are controlled and guided they will lead him into the wrong Path. It is through these portals that the mind goes to look on the attracting lights that are set forth by 403 Mârâ, and it is these senses coalescing with the lower desires that entice the mind to deviate from the Path of Virtue. All potent though they seem to be, still the Chitta, if unsullied by ignorance, hatred and avarice, has the inherent capability of guiding the senses. Thought by itself has not the potentialities of generating Karma. The contact of an object with sight generates a bhavânga chitta, and it may go on till its fifth revolution without any potentiality, but here it must stop or produce Karma, for after the fifth revolution of the thought force, the javan chitta cannot but coalesce with either evil or good. Woe be to him if he allows the ever-turning chitta wheel to come in contact with the lower desires – lobha, moha, dwesha. There are six wide gates through which the chitta can pass without any great effort, and once it is allowed free scope, it may wander off and be lost in the mire. The “eye portal” is the first wide gate through which the chitta can easily pass, and, once you enter its path, leads on in fifteen different by-ways. So is the “second portal”, hearing; so are also the other portals, the senses of smell, taste, touch and manas. Ignorance of the Four Great Truths leads the individual to penetrate the Mâyâvic regions, where he will see all that dazzles the eye and attracts the senses, thus making him generate thought-forces. The more he allows play to the senses, the more he stumbles into dark pitfalls, until he is eventually lost.
The path of emancipation lies through concentration (bhâvanâ) and the cultivation of good thoughts. Bhâvanâ has the power of keeping the wandering senses in subjugation, it alone can crush them. In silence and solitude the chitta can be concentrated, the degree of concentration varying with the Yogi's development. In the arûpa lokas the thought generation is stopped, the mind is in the highest state of trance, and it may last for 500 Kalpas. In the state of Samâdhi there is less of friction and therefore there is less of energy wasted.
But how is it possible to control the wandering senses? The eye is ever on the look-out for some beautiful object. An enchanting figure attracts the eye and the chitta comes into play simultaneously. Unless the individual is on the watch, desire (lobha) comes into force and bewitches the eye and mind, and he is ensnared. This process will continue until such time as the eye-sense is disciplined by chitta. A sense of impermanency unconsciously enters the mind when it is made to think, and the thought force has effect in that it suspends the energy which goes to feed the eye. It is this sense of impermanency that one should cultivate when the âyatanas (senses) want to feed in the pleasure houses of desire. Under all circumstances the senses must be controlled, for they can never be satiated by feeding. The man of prajna, wisdom, alone will succeed in his fight with Mârâ, and once the good neophyte realizes his exalted position he will not deviate from the Path which he has deliberately chosen, he will journey on with the determination of the bird which sits on her eggs.
To lead an absolutely pure life on this earth is as difficult as the 404attainment of Nirvâna: but a determined Yogi by constant effort and a cultivated will may do so. The Visuddhi Mârga mentions the single instance of Sangha Rakshita Thero who, leading an absolutely pure life, became an Arhat on his death-bed. In the state of Samâdhi the whole working of Nature’s laws is brought before the mind's eye of the Yogi, and when he reaches the stage of Yati bhûta nñâna darsana dhyâna he is capable of realizing the demonstrative fact that the world was not created by a God.
The ordinary Yogi can no more realize this state than an ordinary man; it is only the Adepts who have reached the gotrabhu nñâna darsana and the sowan mârga nñâna stages. The heresy of individuality, attavâda, which ensnares the soul in the webs of delusion and puts man into the ever-revolving wheel of Sansâra, has to be crushed if emancipation is to be obtained after seven successive births. With the attainment of the sowan mârga nñâna dhyâna this difficult psychological feat is possible. But before this stage of Dhyâna is reached, the candidate has to pass through several lower stages of Dhyâna and throughout his career of spirituality he should be a Brahmachâri of a pure kind. Lustful thoughts should never be allowed to develope, the body should not be allowed to be touched by a woman. The enchanting company of females he should absolutely avoid if he wants to progress speedily. Even to be born in the Devachanic regions they say is a violation of the Brahmachâri rules. Chelas, beware !
Contentment, moderation in the ways of life, attenuation of passion, calmness of the mind, perseverance in Bhâvanâ, pleas ant demeanour, these should be characteristics of the neophyte, once he has begun his life of spirituality. The desire for the enjoyment of sexual pleasure is a hindrance to Dhyâna, and if he is true to his life the chela should no more think of sensual gratification.
One has got all the qualifications required of a chela; to whom then should he look up to as a Teacher? Who should be his Guru, from whom he may hope to get lessons for the cultivation of his chitta ? He who leads a good and pure life, who knows the Law, who has got Sraddha, Sila, Virya, Samâdhi Prajna, who looks to the moral and spiritual welfare of humanity, he is fit to be a Guru; from such a true friend the chela should receive instructions. But such flowers of humanity are rare and not to be found in the bustling world among a sense-loving people. In the wild solitudes they live, unknown and uncared for by the masses. The candidate for Yoga may not find him, but let him be assured that the Guru is conscious of his yearning, and if the chela honestly perseveres in his efforts, the Guru will appear before him. The rules of Esotericism allow the Mahâtmas to appear only before those who are honest and sincere in their efforts. In times of old Arhats have appeared, and the Visuddhi Mârga mentions the appearance of the Arhat Aswagutta before a chela who was persevering in the Dhyâna Path; but the invariable rule is for the candidate to go in search of a Guru.
A candidate who is more or less sensually inclined should abstain from 405 rich food, luxurious bedding, sweet smelling flowers and scents, and soft clothing; and one who has an irritable temper should live in a shady, beautiful residence, full of shrubberies and beautiful walks. His food should be delicious, and he should wear soft silk clothing, indeed he should have everything that would soothe his temper.
Having found a true friend who is fit to be a Guru, the chela should surrender his life to him. The candidate has to say to his Guru, “O Lord, I surrender myself to you”. This is necessary for the safety of the candidate, and the law is such that unless the chela unreservedly places himself under his Teacher he cannot accept him.
Before he sits for concentration, the Lanoo should be clean in body, his garments must be pleasant, and the seat clean. “Clean body, pleasant clothing, a clean seat”, so says the Visuddhi Mârga.
A Kasina Mand ala (developing disc) should be placed before him at a distance of two and a half cubits, the seat should be one span and four inches high and softly cushioned. The disc should be made of clay and in colour ârunuwan – the colour of the sky just when the sun is dawning – and not blue, orange, or white colour. The first thing that he should think of is the impermanency of the physical body and its mâyâvic nature. Lustful thoughts should not be allowed to enter the mind, for they are abominations prompted by Mârâ. That incarnation of absolute self-sacrifice, that rare flower of humanity, the Great Patron, “Teacher of Nirvâna and the Law”, or some other great Master, should be taken as the candidate's ideal and guide. Their influences should be evoked, for the Dugpas are there with their confederates ready to frustrate the attempts of the chela. “Silence thy thoughts and fix thy whole attention on thy Master, whom yet thou dost not see, but whom thou feelest” (Voice of the Silence), and gaze at the disc, as if looking into a mirror, but not thinking of the colour of the disc, and then repeat the word Om, Patavi, or Araham. Gaze for a time on this, and shutting the eyes continue on in the repetition of the word until the udgraha nimitta appears before you. The appearance of this spectrum is a sure sign of development, and the neophyte should then no longer continue to sit; but leave his âsana and go to his usual residence. The place for meditation should be apart from his residence and from the bustling world; only in solitude and silence is it possible to concentrate one’s thoughts. The best time is a little before dawn, when all nature is silent. The spectrum or the star may dis appear when the mind is indulging in low thoughts, so the neophyte should take care that no lustful thought controls him. If by any means it is lost, he should again go to the place where the developing disc is, and repeat the above-mentioned process and the spectrum will again appear. Let him concentrate the mind on this and the pratibhâga nimitta will then appear to him. On the careful preservation from obscuration of this spectrum his future progress depends. After this he should no more think of joining the sensual world. Henceforth he should regulate his life so as to 406 be free from all worldly contamination. A pleasant site, pleasant talk, healthy and spiritual association, healthy food, he should have. During the time that he is under training his surroundings should be pure and clean for the inner mind to work freely. At such times when his mind becomes dormant he should take courage. It is very important that the mind should be kept in a state of equilibrium and in sympathy with all nature. Unpleasant thoughts should be avoided. Desire to obtain Samâdhi should be ever working in the mind. The first state of the mind when the thought is centralized is called Vitarka, and the reiteration of this process is called Vichâra, the next state is called Vivéka, when the mind reaches a calmness owing to emancipation from the lower desires. This calmness of the mind gives place to joy (priti), which results in the realization of this priti, which is sukha (bliss). Concentrating your mind upon an object and sustaining it thereon for a time, produces a feeling of delight which brings on a state of one-in-all, and this is called Ekagrata. This is the first Dhyâna, and woe be to him who attempts to soar into the higher regions of Dhyâna before mastering the first. The five obstacles that stand in the way of the neophyte are: –
- Kâma-chanda, which makes the thoughts wander about and attract him to the pleasure ground of senses.
- Vyâpada, which brings on irritability of temper, anger, hatred and jealousy.
- Thînamidda, lethargy of mind and body.
- Uddhacca Kukkuchcha, excitement or the disturbance of equilibrium.
- Vicikiccha, scepticism as to the possibility of attaining Samâdhi.
It is essential that the neophyte should abstain from killing, causing others to kill, and sanctioning killing; stealing, sexual intercourse, lying, slandering, abusive language, idle and useless talk, drinking intoxicants and unrighteous livelihood.
It is also essential that he should practise these Pâramitas: –
Dâna. – Charity.
Sila. – Active altruism and harmony in word, thought and deed.
Nayis Kramya. – Renunciation of self and everything that belongs to one’s personality.
Prajna. – Knowledge or wisdom, which gives one the power of discrimination.
Virya. – “Dauntless energy that fights its way to the Supernal Truth.”
Kshanti. – Unswerving patience under the most trying persecution.
Satya. – Truth under all trials and difficulties.
Adhistana. – Will power that gives strength to carry out one’s pledges in the Upward Path.
Maitri. – Universal love and kindness to all living beings.
Upeksha. – Tranquil perfect indifference to pain and pleasure, praise or blame. 407 A neophyte should be ever ready to listen to advice; to reflect, enquire and converse. The four requisites that are essential to one who is going on the Path are: –
- Freedom from prejudice and partiality.
- Freedom from anger and hatred.
- Freedom from fear, and adherence to justice, regardless of consequences.
- Freedom from ignorance.
Buddha Gaya.
Theosophy and Psychical Research
411
An Outline of the “Secret Doctrine”.
At the dawn of Universal Day, faint lines of difference marking off the one Infinite Being into separate lives begin to appear. These lines of difference are gradually to become wider and wider, till at last, on the outermost, lowest range of life, the separate lives will appear quite isolated from each other, and quite isolated from the One.
But at first the lines of demarcation are so imperceptible that each one of these separated lives, each one of these doors to the inner majesty of the Infinite, appears almost one with the One Life, and almost possesses the fulness and power of the One Life. This pure and lofty state is shared 412 by every separate unit of life at the dawn of Universal Day; and to this pure and lofty state each unit will return in the evening twilight, before the Universal Night. The purity of the dawn of Universal Day is the purity of unfallen innocence; the purity of the evening twilight is the purity of full knowledge.
Each unit of life in its lofty state, in the dawn, is closely united in almost unseparated life with every other unit of life: and each unit is endowed with the twin powers of Consciousness and Will; the power to perceive, and the power to generate perceptions.
The wills of these almost divine units of life, working in harmony, give birth to the rhythmic chains of images which make up the manifested universe. These chains of images are regarded as illusory because they take birth in the apparent separation of the really united powers of Consciousness and Will; and, as the cause which gives rise to them is thus only apparent and temporary, they are also only apparent and temporary, not eternally real.
But as the chains of images exist from the dawn to the evening twilight of Universal Day, they are temporarily real; and, with this proviso, we shall treat them as real in subsequent sections, discussing their forms and successions without further allusion to their illusory nature. The almost divine units of life produce the worlds by the activity of their wills, acting in harmony, and it appears that this activity is in a mysterious sense sevenfold; that there are seven sides or modes of this activity; and that, consequently, the almost divine units of life may be said to fall into sevenfold groups. It is difficult to find any essential reason for this sevenfold division; but the following considerations may, at any rate, illustrate the idea. We have likened these units of life to the facets of a diamond; and if these facets are conceived as circular, that is, of a perfect, unmodified form, it will be seen that around each circle are grouped six other circles, making up with it a sevenfold group. If these circles expand so as to bring their circumferences into intimate contact, their mutual pressure will mould them into symmetrical six-sided figures, or regular hexagons: each of which will be surrounded by six other hexagons, making with it a sevenfold group; just as the cells in a honeycomb become regular hexagons. And each group being surrounded by six others, makes up, with it, a sevenfold larger group.
In this way we may conceive that the facets of the infinite diamond, by which we have symbolised the One Infinite Life, are forced by the necessity of their being into sevenfold, symmetrical groups; and that the almost divine units of life, formed by the first differentiation of the One, are driven by the same necessity to fall into sevenfold groups; and that, for this reason, their united wills which give birth to the chains of images and worlds are forced to act in seven modes, or to put forth seven-sided impulses of formation. 413 By reason of these seven modes of Will, the almost divine units of life are united with sevenfold hosts, or seven Formative Powers, the units in each of which are innumerable. The sevenfold mode of manifestation, which has its cause in the division of the One into seven Formative Powers, will be seen to reappear in every range and plane of life; and, further, will be seen to determine the division of manifested life into seven ranges or planes of perception: seven modes in which the Consciousness and Will of each unit and of all units confront each other. We shall have most to say of these seven ranges of life further on; at present we will return to the mystery of the seven. We have seen that one circle may be circumscribed by six equal circles, making with it a sevenfold group; and that pressure will resolve these circles into sevenfold groups of regular hexagons, one of the three regular figures which will fill up plane space. Whatever number of regular hexagons be drawn, in contact, we shall still always have each one surrounded by six others, thus making up a series of sevenfold groups.
This property of circles and hexagons is one reason for the repeated appearance of the circle, and the ratio of its circumference to the diameter, which is also the diameter of the inscribed hexagon, in the symbology of the fourth Stanza of Dzyan.
The other regular figures which will fill up plane space are the square and the equilateral triangle. The equilateral triangles when placed together fall into regular hexagons, and thus into the same sevenfold groups. If the square be represented by a cube in space of three dimensions, it will be found that cubes will similarly fill up that space in groups of seven, one cube in each of “the six directions of space, and one in the middle”, in the words of the Stanzas.
It appears therefore that both plane space, or space of two dimensions, are filled up by sevenfold groups of hexagons and cubes respectively. We do not know whether this investigation has been carried out theoretically for other dimensions of space; but apparently the same law would hold true.
This is probably one reason for the use of the triangle, cube, and circle in that part of the Stanzas which deals with the modelling of the manifested universe in space.
Another cause of the sevenfold processes of manifestation seems to be this: let a point be taken to symbolise the beginning of manifestation; the vibration of this point will produce a finite straight line; now a finite straight line is an ellipse whose minor axis is zero; let this minor axis become a finite quantity, though still less than the major axis; we shall thus have three stages of manifestation: first, the point – an ellipse of which both axes are zero; second, the line – an ellipse of which one axis is zero; thirdly, an ellipse with unequal axes. If the axes become equal, we shall have that special form of ellipse which is called a circle, as the fourth stage; 414 and the circle will pass back to the point through three similar stages, thus making the cycle of manifestation in a series of seven; namely: point, verticle line, prolate ellipse, circle, oblate ellipse, horizontal line, and point. This can be demonstrated very beautifully in a well-known experiment with two tuning forks at right angles, to each of which a mirror is attached; a beam of light falling on the first mirror being reflected to the second, and thence to a screen. The point of light will go through the seven forms we have noted. It is impossible to fully explain this familiar experiment without diagrams; but it is well worth studying as an illustration of gradual permutations of form through seven types. These seven types are generated from three elements; the spot of light, the horizontal movement of one mirror and the vertical movement of the other.
In general three elements can be arranged in seven ways: the first three being each element taken separately; the second three being the elements taken in pairs; and the seventh being the three elements taken together. This is one explanation of the derivation of the Seven from the Three in the Secret Doctrine; as the Three were already derived from the One.
It is unnecessary to go further into the mysteries of these numbers; enough has been said to illustrate and in part to explain the division of the almost divine units of life into sevenfold groups, and Seven Hosts of Formative Powers.
C. J.
A Visit to Sholinghur.
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting Sholinghur, a place some sixty miles inland from Madras, and as there is much of interest there, to the student of Occultism, a short description of the locality and its traditions may perhaps be welcome to the readers of Lucifer.
The immediate object of my visit was an official one, namely to open a new Branch of the Society, and also a Reading Room, both of which branches of activity owe their existence to the untiring exertions of our brother V. Cooppooswami Iyer.
After an eight miles’ drive in bullock-bandies from the railway station, over a road made doubly rugged by the recent heavy rains, and after crossing several flooded nullahs, we arrived at our destination.
The Reading Room itself is built outside Sholinghur, at a distance of one-and-a-quarter miles. The locality in which it is situated is called Ghatikachelam, which means “the place where Moksha was attained in Ghatika (a moment)”. It is with a description of this place, therefore, rather than of Sholinghur itself, that I propose to deal.
There are fourteen peaks immediately surrounding Ghatikachelam, three to the east, four to the north, three to the north-east, three to the west, and one to the south. All of them are in the highest degree 415picturesque. There is plenty of contrast here and no approach to monotony about the hills, which abound in graceful peaks on all sides, and though they present from below somewhat of a bleak appearance, a closer inspection shows the valleys to be covered with the luxuriant foliage of many trees.
It is a lovely spot. On all sides of Ghatikachelam are the hills, those close by looking majestic and grand with their rugged tops, those in the distance softened, and so to speak, idealised by the soft blue haze that surrounds them. Certainly Sholinghur and its locality are favoured by nature and ancient traditions; current local reports and other evidences tend to show that it is favoured too in other ways. It is said that Great Beings visit the hills around from time to time, if they do not actually inhabit them, which may be the case; there is in my humble opinion at all events sufficient evidence to show that Sholinghur is a place frequently visited by sages. The independent testimony of a large number of Brahmins tends to confirm me in my belief. One Brahmin brother pointed out to me a peculiar kind of shrub, which is rare and only to be found in a few localities, and wherever it is found it is said to be an indication that great Yogis live near. This is interesting, but of course no direct proof. The other evidence consists chiefly of reports of those priests and others who have more or less direct evidence on the point.
There are two principal hill-peaks close to Ghatikachelam, both having sacred temples on their summits, the higher of the two is called “Narasimhaswami’s Hill”. The temple here is dedicated to Narasimha (the Man-Lion God); that on the smaller one to Hanuman (the Monkey God). As time only allowed a visit to the larger temple, I can only give a description of this and its surroundings.
From the plain to the summit of the peak is a distance of about two miles. The ascent is very steep, and in former days was attended with almost insuperable difficulties owing to the ruggedness of the hill-side. Help, however, came to the devotees in the following manner. In the old days, before British rule held sway over India, a certain individual fell into great arrears in the payment of tribute to his Rajah. So behindhand did he get that when he at last made up his mind to pay he found that from seven to eight lakhs of rupees was the “demnition total” of his debts. On his way to his creditor, he had to pass by Ghatikachelam, and, like a good Hindu, determined to pay his respects to the sacred temple. He was particularly impressed by the difficulty and painfulness of the ascent, and resolved to keep back one of the lakhs of rupees and devote it to the making of steps up the hill, with a view to lightening the labours of the many pilgrims. Possibly he was foolish to controvert the saying that suggests to mankind the advisability of being just before generous; but events proved the contrary in this case. On arrival, he informed the Rajah that he had retained a lakh of rupees for the purpose above mentioned, and handed over the balance of seven lakhs. The Rajah, overjoyed at receiving so much ready money, in the fulness of his heart contributed one of the lakhs to the previously established “Fund for providing steps for Pilgrims”, and two lakhs of rupees were thus placed at the disposal of the philanthropist. Thus, through the kindness of the Rajah and his debtor, pilgrims are now enabled to make the ascent to the temple with comparative ease.
As the early morning appeared most suitable for our ascent, we left the camp at about 6 a.m. The sun had not fully risen, the dew was on the grass, and the air was delightfully cool and fresh.
Seen from below the hill presents a two-peaked aspect, and only the front part or entrance gateway of the temple, which is situated on the more distant peak, can be seen. The other peak consists of an enormous mass of rock, acting as it were the part of sentinel to the sacred building behind it.
The ascent, in spite of the Rajah's steps, was laborious enough, and 416 several halts were called at the numerous mantapams (rest-houses) on the way up. But the beauty and tranquillity of the scene at the summit amply repaid our trouble – as a certain Brahmin of the party, who had manifested a strong desire to lie down and go to sleep on the way up, was ready to admit.
The temple in itself is an old and venerable pile, with a beautiful entrance-gate and steps. The actual body of the building itself, which is in a species of court-yard, is not so attractive, being low in height, and having a rather insignificant appearance. To really appreciate the temple one should regard it altogether, gateway, main hall, and outer buildings. Not being one of the “Twice-born” I was not permitted to enter the temple itself, and was fain to content myself with furtive peeps through the narrow windows.
The interior of the temple, I am informed, is extremely gloomy and is divided into various chambers or compartments.
The image within has the reputation of possessing properties for the curing of diseases. In front of the image is a large yantra (a receptacle for or centre of magnetic power). Large numbers of sufferers resort to the temples for alleviation, and the God is supposed to inform them in their dreams when they are cured and fit to go on their way.
Let me digress here and give a short account of the history and tradition of the building. One of the members of the Sholinghur Branch, with great kindness, sent me a copy of a Sanskrit book in Telugu characters, called Ghatikachela Kshetra Mâhâtmyam. This is a Stahla Purâna, i.e., one treating of the sacredness of a particular place. I am indebted to our Adyar Library Pundit for the following notes from the book in question.
The Rishi Parâshara gave out the information contained in the book to the other Rishis when they asked him for some account of King Indra Dyumna.
The Purâna begins with the history of this King of Madura, who is said to have attained to Brahminhood only after making tapas (penances) at Ghatikachelam, he having been directed there by Paramashiva himself. The God Narasimha appeared to him there and blessed him, and thereupon, with the assistance of Hanuman, the Monkey God, sent by Narasimha, the king destroyed the Rakshasas who disturbed the peace of the Rishis during their meditations. The place, unlike others, does not owe its sacredness to any particular Rishi; for its sanctity is said to have existed from time immemorial. The seven great Rishis are said to reside here.
Images and so-called idols, as every Theosophist knows, like talismans, are simply centres of force. They are often endowed with magnetic properties by Adepts, and thus become potent centres of magnetic force. The properties of the image are said to be renewed from time to time as occasion requires. The temple of Ghatikachelam has the reputation of healing disease, not only on account of its specific magnetic qualities but also by reason of its position, where the health-giving mountain air tends greatly in itself to the cure of sickness.
Whilst my companions were paying their respects in the interior of the temple I remained outside, giving my homage to the Goddess Nature. Truly she was to be seen at her best. The power of the sun was just becoming perceptible, and the morning mist was being broken up on all sides. Through the rifts I could see the waters of the sacred lake below gleaming with the half-veiled light. Not a single human creature was visible. Everywhere silence reigned, save for those numerous indescribable nature-sounds, which together make up the one great nature-note. But better pens than mine have before now described early morning on a mountain-top, and I will not run the risk of wearying my readers. It does everyone good to be alone with nature, and the Theosophist should especially value such opportunities, for he comes on these occasions nearer to learning 417something of the real meaning of those words in the Voice of the Silence:
“For as the sacred river's roaring voice, whereby all nature-sounds are echoed back, so must the heart of him ‘who in the stream would enter’ thrill in response to every sigh and thought of all that lives and breathes”.
The guardian of the temple is an old man, blind and bent with the weight of years. The officiating priests live in the plains below, and ascend every morning to perform their duties. Through constant practice they are able to ascend at a run, in a very few minutes, the steps which take the ordinary pilgrim some half-an-hour’s hard toiling to surmount.
The old custodian informed us that some ten years back he had often known of great Yogis visiting the temple, but that when they came near him he always became confused, and could see and remember nothing. He went on to say that of late years he thought none had been there. Whether this is so or not, it is certain, as Virgil says somewhere: “The fame still haunts the place”, and the whole locality has a distinctly purifying and sanctifying influence.
Few branches of the Society have such favourable surroundings and conditions as those with which the Sholinghur Branch has started its work, and the band of workers, who, under the presidentship of our Brother Cooppooswami Iyer, have formed themselves into a Branch, should have before them in the future a good and useful field of activity. On this account it is hoped that this short description of Sholinghur will prove of special interest to the readers of Lucifer.
Fragments from an Indian Note Book
422
Thou’rt passing hence, O sad Old Year, |
| S. |
Correspondence.
The Mattei Electro-Homœopathic Treatment
423
T. L. Harris.
I request permission to protest in your magazine against the Editorial attack made upon T. L. Harris and his adherents, in the November number: and against your identification of the latter with those of the late Laurence Oliphant (1): and to briefly present a more accurate statement of Mr. Harris’ central teaching than the travesty you have furnished (2).
I desire to premise by observing that I have been privately given to understand you do not accuse Mr. Harris in your article of personal viciousness, but only of the use of language in certain of his writings, which tends to the degradation of the public morals (3).
It is evident from your article that you have fallen into the serious error of an unreserved belief in the identity of what you term the “school” of Laurence Oliphant with that of T. L. Harris, and from this it is equally clear that, at present, you know actually nothing at all of Mr. Harris’ “school” nor of the vital spirit of his teachings (4).
Recognising the sincerity of your belief, and having for years profoundly reverenced the noble spirit which has inspired your public work – especially your public work for womankind, I can fully understand how your mistaken belief aroused your indignation, and frankly and freely excuse and forgive it, and the undeserved criticism of my brethren and our beloved friend, T. L. Harris.
Accept, therefore, I beg of you, what herein follows, as words addressed by one lover of his race to another, for the purpose of removing misconception; accept them 424 as spoken in the spirit of truth and of knowledge, arising out of intercourse with Mr. Harris and members of the B.N.L., in different parts of the world, extending over a period of nearly twenty years, a short part of the latter half of it having been spent in residence in the central home of the Brotherhood at Fountain Grove.
Fully accepting what I believe I am correct in assuming to be your position; namely, that you do not charge Mr. Harris, but his language, with being unclean; permit me to remind you that language in itself is neither clean nor unclean, but simply a vehicle to embody the quality imported into it by the reviewer. Wherefore, seeing that it is but words you censure because of the erotic character you see in them, who but yourself, and such as think with you, have imported that character into them ? (5)
Coupled with this is the fact that the book whose verbiage you have publicly criticised, is a privately printed communication to private friends. It was given to and accepted by the T.S. as such a private communication, and it was unknown to the public until you made it known. If therefore, any harm should come to the public morals from the quality you have discovered and made public, the fault rests with Lucifer (5).
Whether or not the T.S. teaching (if I have correctly apprehended it) be the higher – to attain perfection, humanity must stamp out sex and become sterilized (7); or the converse – that perfect Society is attained through sex purified and made perfect, as emphasized by T. L. Harris, I do not here desire to question; but one thing I unhesitatingly affirm, namely, that to man T. L. Harris says: – You being in the male form and possessing the (godlike) power of generating an image of man, must refrain from using that power until the Divine Man, who is your Higher Life, possesses you from His own high and inmost plane, to your own lowest and outermost, lest the image generated possess only the form but not the spirit of man. Again, I likewise affirm that to woman he says: – Guard watchfully your virgin state and maintain it in whole-souled integrity. . . . [A few lines are omitted]. To you it is given to embody and give form to the Divine Idea. Through you the Christ of God descends, the Divine Man is manifested, God in form and fashion as a Man. One-Twain in counterpartal outwardness, but Twain-One in inscrutable Being.
To attain this end, the Supreme Good, as revealed in the concept of the Ideal by the man and the woman, must be loved and worshipped in race-service by each with the whole heart, soul, mind and strength, with unfaltering and unswerving faithfulness, whate’er may betide. So loving and so doing, the Ideal will be seen to be the indwelling operation of the “Counterpartal” or Higher Self, and the Twain will become One in God, who is the Only Life. Thus will every Man-Truth become One with his counterpartal Woman. God and Illusion vanish in the Reality of the God-Idea embodied, manifested and glorified in a Divine Theo-Social Humanity. (8)
This is the spirit and end of T. L. Harris’ work, and there are numbers of noble men and women among the English-speaking people who are in heart-sympathy with him, and striving with undaunted courage to win the Higher Life. Men and women, husbands and wives, twain yet reaching up to the unity, who are surely, even though it may be but very slowly, ascending to their place amongst the children of the Highest. Surely, even if slowly, is the Highest descending into them, to take full possession – even into the sex-idea and sex-form; not effacing them but purifying; not degrading but exalting them, making them the holiest of holies within us, as is most fitting, seeing that through sex the Highest incarnates and becomes the Son of Man. (9)
I print the above, as I attacked Mr. Harris’ writings, but having thus admitted a reply, I do not propose to prolong the correspondence. I append brief answers.
(1) I spoke of Laurence Oliphant as one of the most brilliant adherents of “the school based on the teaching of Mr. Thomas Lake Harris”. Everyone knows that Mr. Oliphant quarrelled with Mr. Harris, but that does not alter the fact that the former learned his ideas from Mr. Harris. As my attack, however, was on the writings of Mr. Harris, and not on those of Mr. Oliphant, there is no “identification” to Mr. Harris’ detriment.
(2) The “travesty” is carefully taken from Mr. Harris’ writings, and the literal quotations carry sufficient condemnation.
(3) There is no need for Mr. Pearce to be privately given to understand that I do not accuse Mr. Harris of personal vice in my article. If he has read the article, he 425 knows that I make no personal accusation. I do not know Mr. Harris, and certainly should not accuse him of vice on the strength of newspaper paragraphs.
(4) Again I am made to doubt if Mr. Pearce has read my article. I have not spoken of the “school of L. Oliphant”, but of that of Mr. Harris to which Mr. Oliphant belonged, and I distinctly say that it is “best to judge the school by the writings of its founder” and go on to criticise Mr. Harris’ writings.
(5) “Language in itself is neither clean nor unclean, but simply a vehicle to embody the quality imported into it by the reviewer”! So a man may fitly use obscene language, and anyone who protests against it is responsible for its vileness. I can only register my dissent from this theory, which would seem to imply that if a man is brought up in a police court for the use of foul language, the magistrate who condemns it as foul should be fined rather than the speaker.
(6) A book presented to a public Society for use in its reading-room can hardly be regarded as a “communication to private friends”. I quite understand that Mr. Harris may object to its publication, but I published my article to warn the public against a private propaganda, which was attracting some people who most certainly would not be attracted if they knew the end of the path the beginning of which was so promising. Publicity is the best cure for insidious mischief of this kind.
(7) The Theosophical Society does not teach that sex must be stamped out and sterilized. Theosophy, in its Occult branch, lifts man beyond sex.
(8) Mr. Pearce is not as flowery and passionate in his language as is Mr. Harris, but the teaching is curiously identical with my “travesty”.
(9) “The sex-idea and sex-form” have ever been the “holiest of holies” in phallic worship, but personally I regard this view as a blasphemy against the spiritual and intellectual nature of man, as exalting his physical nature – which is a transitory phenomenon – above his real Self, which is immortal.
Finally, I am sorry if in my criticism of Mr. Harris’ writings I have hurt the feelings of any worthy people. But surely they ought to recognise that the right of free propaganda, which I should be the last to deny them, must carry with it the right of free criticism. For my own part, I am always glad when those who will not teach Theosophy criticise it, for, believing it to be true, I know that attack can only serve it, and where Truth is concerned I do not “misdoubt her strength”.
Reviews.
Letters that have helped me.[16]
Some books are meant not for review and criticism, but for pondering and learning from, and such a one, emphatically, is that the name of which stands at the head of this notice. For many its words will be without meaning, or even repellent in the meaning that may be grasped. For the Letters that have helped Jasper Niemand could only have been written by one who was wise, and will only be appreciated by those who are learning wisdom. The atmosphere they breathe is that of the mountain-top, clear, serene, cold – as men count coldness – but bracing and life-giving to those whose lungs can bear the inrush of that purer air. Jasper Niemand was evidently an apt pupil, and many delicate touches shew that he has caught to some extent the spirit of his teacher. He is not of the many who will be inclined to cry:
“I thought I could not breathe in that fine air, |
These Letters, briefly, are for the Occultist rather than for the Theosophist; for those who have deliberately turned their backs on material delights and are seeking, at whatever cost of personal pain, to 426 tread the Path that “winds uphill all the way”. For such are the Letters written, and such will find them a quite inestimable gift.
It is not possible to give any fair idea of the book by extracts; one may say that the spirit of it throughout is love for all that lives, resignation to law, indifference to praise and blame and all things earthly, desire to serve the Great Cause in any way the Good Law brings, unselfish endeavour for the common good. One extract may, perhaps, be suggestive as shewing the way in which the writer sought “how I could enlarge my idea of brotherhood”. He says:
“I am not separate from anything. ‘I am that which is.’ That is, I am Brahma, and Brahma is everything. But being in an illusionary world, I am surrounded by certain appearances that seem to make me separate. So I will proceed to mentally state and accept that I am all these illusions. I am my friends; and then I went to them in general and in particular. I am my enemies; then I felt them all. I am the poor and the wicked; I am the ignorant. Those moments of intellectual gloom are the moments when I am influenced by those ignorant ones who are myself. All this in my nation. But there are many nations, and to those I go in mind; I feel and I am them all, with what they hold of superstition, or of wisdom, or of evil. . . . Shall I not take heart, even when a dear friend deserts me and stabs me deep, when I know that he is myself ?”
Another passage may be interesting to all Theosophists just now, when there is so much discussion on methods of propaganda, for it shews how one who is far on the Path measures our duty. Speaking of those who have stood idly aside, he says:
“Had they spoken for their Cause, more earnest people would long ago have heard of the movement, instead of being kept away until now, like yourself, for want of knowledge that it existed. . . . All around you are those who do not know these things, who never heard of them, and yet many of our fellow-members are only anxious to study for their own benefit.”
Very earnestly we commend this little book to all who seek the Path, for it may serve them as a sign-post to the entrance; or, if for that they be not yet ready, it will tell them of the spirit that should animate the disciple, the spirit that must be born in the heart ere the first steps can be taken.
Further Evolution.[17]
This work of some 131 pages, by Neil Gordon Munro, has some advanced thought along scientific lines upon Mind, Activity, Unity, Complexity, &c., and a specially interesting presentation of the “physical basis” of mind. It is difficult for a Theosophist to review a work which leads to Theosophical conclusions from wholly untheosophical premisses. “Let us not forget”, says the author, “that we help to constitute the surroundings of our fellow-beings, and that we cannot confine our influence to ourselves. We are partly responsible for the progress of our brethren in humanity, and can by our aid and sympathy help them in those circumstances that are so hard to reconcile with progress in the path of truth.” Yet we are told in the preceding pages that emotion is a passage of nerve motion from the perceptive centres towards the outer terminations of efferent nerves, particularly in the muscular system; that it is inseparable from intellect in the present state of existence, and that intellect is par excellence mind. This practically means that emotions are the evidence of intellect, and this latter is the highest expression of mind. Add to this the statement that Will is the conception by the mind of a “dominant idea”, which may become suffi- 427 ciently definite to guide other ideas, and through them to influence our actions, and it will be seen that, from the view of mind as “an aggregation of differences that formed part of the environment”, moral responsibility must be the result of environment, and not a factitive power in relation thereto. Hence we are not surprised that the questions of evolution remain unanswered. The book is full of strong thought and works up some of the latest scientific knowledge to a conclusion from which no Theosophist could dissent, viz., the ultimate unification of individual consciousness in the Universal Mind, and hence the essential unity of the whole of the Human Race.
W. R. O.
Oracles of Nostradamus.[18]
A vindication of Nostradamus is by no means an easy task, or one likely to meet with due recognition in days like these, when, as Mr. Ward says in his preface, “there is a huge prejudice . . . that sets in strongly with the multitude against anything that endeavours to deal seriously, or by mystical insight, with things occultly spiritual, or future”. Nevertheless, our author has undertaken the task in quite an ingenuous manner, and with much success, as it seems to us, in an elegant book of some 400 pp.
The author takes the reader into his confidence at the outset, and puts him in the way of arriving rapidly at the pith of the book and its oracular forecasts, so that, as it is said, “he may discern for himself in a few minutes whether, or whether not, the topics treated of have for him a sufficient interest to lead him on to make a thorough study of the book or to decline it altogether”.
Mr. Ward has devoted some 30 pp. to the life of Nostradamus, which is exceedingly interesting reading. Then follows the preface of Nostradamus to his prophecies, in which he dedicates his writings to his son Cæsar, then only a babe some few weeks old. An epistle of Nostradamus to King Henry II., with a dedication of a thousand prophecies to him, affords some useful hints as to the methods by which the calculations were made. The author introduces a chapter on Magic, in which a description of the manner in which Nostradamus received his oracles is given; but in this matter we think the author has taken the prophet’s statement too literally. The body of the work is devoted to the “Oracles” and their interpretation, and although the former are familiarized to us in the old work of Dr. Theophilus de Garencières, published in London in 1671, yet the ingenious interpretation of some of the prophet's anagrams throws a new light upon many of the most famous quatrains.
We are glad to be able to recommend Mr. Ward's book to our readers, and those who are interested in the prophetic art, or have made a study of the law of Cycles as set forth in the Secret Doctrine, will find in the Oracles of Nostradamus a most fruitful field of research, opened up by one who is evidently as completely in love with his subject as he is skilful in its treatment.
W. R. O.
The Mahâbhârata.[19]
It has been a matter of much regret that the longest and, very probably, the most ancient epic in the world, the great Indian poem, the Mahâbhârata, 428 has never yet been rendered in its entirety into any European language. Portions of it have been translated, and the continued version of it by the French Orientalist, Fauche, was only cut short by his death, although indeed this version, as Weber says, “can only pass for a translation in a very qualified sense”. “The Great (War of the) Bhâratas”, told in no less than 220,000 lines of metrical Sanskrit, is to India what the Iliad and Odyssey were to Greece. But whereas the Greeks, who were spurred on to noble deeds by the rhapsodical recital of the Homeric hexameters which told the “Fate of Troy divine”, have long passed into the Unseen World of Hades, and returned, the Hindûs still listen to the shlokas of “Vyâsa” in the rhapsodical recitation of their Paurânikass.
In 1795, F. A. Wolf startled the lights of classical scholarship in Europe with his famous Prolegomena: the anthropomorphism and dead-letterism of the ages were shattered by the enlightened thesis of the great German scholar, who contended that the Iliad and Odyssey were not originally two complete poems, but two collections of epic songs enshrining the dateless tradition of a hoary antiquity; of which, indeed, the theme was one, but the poets many. In brief, that Homer was not a “solar myth” – we had not discovered that “universal solvent” of a materialistic scholarship in those days – but at any rate a generic term. So with the Mahâbhârata; its wisdom and beauty are not to be set down to an individual; and Oriental scholarship is almost unanimously in favour of viewing its authorship as Wolf viewed the Bible of Greece. Whether there was an actual individual called Krishna Dvaipâyana, who afforded the material basis round which the subsequent mythological legends crystallized, or whether there was not, is not perhaps competent to be decided in the Kali Yuga. But seeing that this Krishna Dvaipâyana was also the Vayâsa, or arranger, of the Vedas, Theosophists may throw his date back to at any rate a direct descendant of that “Being” of the Third Race, who was the Root of the Tree from which all Initiates have sprung.
Mr. Protapa Chandra Roy has not ventured to enlighten us as to the history of the great epic he is so industriously translating, nor has he thought fit to aid his translation with explanatory notes; his object, apparently, is to do the pioneer work of a first translation and to leave future developments to less stout-hearted scholars. The extent of the undertaking also must have precluded anything but a strict rendering of the text, to bring the work into reasonable compass. The translation was commenced in 1883, and now in 1891 we are arrived at the seventieth Part of seventy-two octavo pages, which only brings us to the Shânti Parvan or “Book of Consolation”, the twelfth of the eighteen.
And now a word about the self-sacrificing editor and translator of this monumental undertaking. Babu Protapa Chandra Roy was impressed from his youth with the desire of rendering the great religious works of India more accessible to his fellow-countrymen. His first undertaking was an edition of the Mahâbhârata in Bengâli, a work which took him seven years to accomplish, and which was sold at the very moderate cost of Rs. 42 a copy. Impelled by almost unparalleled generosity, Babu Protapa Chandra Roy distributed gratis 1,000 copies of this work. But he forgot that he was not living in the Golden Age, which ancient poets sing of, but he was in the midst of the nineteenth century of “enlightenment”, and he soon found his gratis copies sold in the market at a price exceeding the moderate one his patriotism has placed on the edition. By no means discouraged, however, Mr. Roy conceived the project of establishing a national institution for printing the sacred literature of India, which took shape in the “Dâtavya Bhârata Karyalya”. Writing in 1883, the founder says: –
“The ‘Dâtavya Bhârata Karyalya’ has, within the course of the last seven years printed and gratuitously distributed two editions of the Mahâbhârata, in Bengâli translation, each edition comprising nearly 3,000 copies. One edition of the Harivansha, comprising 429 3,000 copies, has been exhausted. The Râmâyana also has been taken in hand and is nearly completed, the text of Vâlmiki being published along with the translation. Roughly estimated, the ‘Bhârata Karyalya’ has distributed nearly 9,000 copies of the Mahâbhârata and the Harivansha taken together, and that number will swell to 18,000 when the fourth edition of the Mahâbhârata and the first edition of the Râmâyana (both diglot) are complete. A single copy of the Mahâbhârata consists of about 1,033 forms, octavo, demy; a single copy of the Harivansha, of 112 forms, and a single copy of the Râmâyana, of 578 forms. The arithmetical result, therefore, of the ‘Bhârata Karyalya’ has been that 13,783,500 separate printed forms have been already gratuitously distributed and in course of distribution.”
This is something like good solid and self-sacrificing work; work of a nature that no “arithmetical result” can accurately gauge in importance. For the renaissance of Sanskrit literature is not to be estimated by figures, and such extensive efforts at the rescue of these world-heirlooms from a rapidly closing-in oblivion cannot be too highly eulogized.
The approbation of all lovers of disinterested generosity is also due to those who have aided Babu Protapa Chandra Roy in his undertaking, and have by their donations defrayed part of the estimated expense of Rs. 100,000. As to the translation itself, it is written in exceedingly good English for a foreigner; though of course, here and there, the reader stumbles on a phrase that is not quite orthodox; still in spite of these blemishes, from a strict literary point of view, the sense of the original is preserved, and a most useful translation placed in our hands, for which we cannot fail to be thankful. The method of transliteration is faulty and misleading for all who do not possess a knowledge of Sanskrit; but here again we can afford to be lenient in a review of such pioneer work, and be inclined to accord the translator a maximum of praise and a minimum of blame, where a later translator would meet with a more severe criticism.
Babu Protapa Chandra has given us a translation which we did not previously possess, and which, by adhering closely to the original, gives us an insight into the spirit of the great Hindû epic that is otherwise unattainable. Earnest students of Âryan religious thought and methods, especially Theosophists, will therein find an inexhaustible treasure-house of philosophical and scientific psychological knowledge in allegorical garb. Page after page of legend and myth teach the great lesson that the consistent method of antiquity forced home, by every means available, on the human mind – the history and nature of the Soul. Theosophical students, skilled in symbolism and allegory, will find therein reiterated confirmation of what H. P. Blavatsky has taught us in the Secret Doctrine; and the philosophical treatises which are contained in it, such as the Bhagavadgîtâ, Anugîtâ and Sanatsujâtîya, will give endless instruction to those, who are not attracted to the more obscure allegorical narrative of the epic.
All Theosophists, however, who would learn of the great war between the Kauravas and Pândavas that takes place daily in each child of man, should read the Mahâbhârata. In any case, the reader cannot fail to be impressed with the spirit of gentleness and courtesy, of purity and high ideals, that pervades the narrative, and be enchanted with the gorgeous imagery of the constructive Eastern mind. Although the translation we are dealing with is only two-thirds completed we cannot refrain from giving a digest of the closing act of the great drama and the fate of the last of the heroes, the lot of the awakened human Soul. Here it is as given in the Hindû Classical Dictionary:
“Yudhishthira went on alone with the dog until he reached the gate of heaven. He was invited by Indra to enter, but he refused unless his brothers and Draupadî were also received. ‘Not even into thy heaven would I enter if they were not there.’ He is assured that they are already there, and is again told to enter, ‘wearing his body of flesh’. He again refuses unless, in the words of Pope. ‘admitted to that equal sky, his faithful dog should bear him company’. Indra expostulates in vain. ‘Never, come weal or come woe, will I abandon yon faithful dog.’ He is at length admitted, but to his dismay finds there Duryodhana and his enemies, but not his brothers or Draupadî. He refuses to remain in heaven with them, and is conducted to the jaws of hell, where he beholds terrific sights and hears wailings of grief and anguish. He recoils, but well-known voices implore him to 430remain and assuage their sufferings. He triumphs in this crowning trial, and resolves to share the fate of his friends in hell rather than abide with their foes in heaven. Having endured this supreme test, the whole scene is shown to be the effect of mâyâ, or illusion, and he and his brothers and friends dwell with Indra in full content of heart for ever.”
In conclusion, we congratulate Babu Protapa Chandra Roy on his patriotic work, and can assure him that in the West also there are some “White Brâhmans” who love the sacred Books of the East, and who appreciate his self-sacrificing efforts, and hope to see the day when the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana will take their proper place in the world’s literature, and throw their light on many problems that are obscure only because of racial prejudice and the general ignorance.
Members of the T.S. will be glad to hear that a copy of this valuable work is being procured for the Library at Headquarters; and readers who believe in the aphorism “non refert quam multos, sed quam bonos libros legas”, will be able to obtain the whole series of the translation for £6, or, if they are scholars who are unable to pay the full rate, they may procure the work for £3 10s. The Theosophical Publishing Society, 7, Duke St., Adelphi, W.C., will be pleased to take orders for Mr. Protapa Chandra Roy.
Theosophical Activities.
Indian Section.
We have received a telegram from the General Secretary of the Indian Section: – “The Convention has been very successful”.
The President-Founder has returned in good health from Japan, bringing with him the signatures of the majority of the Buddhist sects to the fourteen propositions which have been already signed by the Burmese and Singhalese sects. We also learn from a correspondent that the propositions have been taken to Lhassa by a Chinese priest, who was visiting Ceylon at the time of the Colonel’s visit there on his way home. It is impossible to say what will be the result of the creation of this common platform of Buddhism; and it seems almost incredible that antagonistic sects should show such a spirit of amity in the latter end of the nineteenth century. Surely strange days are arising among us at the close of the cycle!
The Ranchi Branch reports that their President, Bro. Nibaranchandra Gupta, has been authorised to visit all districts and sub-divisions of Chota Nagpur and all places which are comprised in that division, with a view to delivering addresses on Theosophy and forming new Branches and Centres.
We also hear with pleasure from a correspondent that efforts are being made to start a Theosophical newspaper in the vernacular at Calcutta.
A learned Indian writes to us from Bombay, stating that he hopes soon to visit Armenia, in search of the “large number of very valuable and archaic MSS. in certain Armenian monasteries”. We cordially wish our brother success in his difficult undertaking.
Adyar. – The President-Founder returns here on the 10th December from Ceylon, where he has been spending a few days en route from Japan. Bertram Keightley will also return about that time. The latter has visited 431 a large number of Branches in Bengal and N.W.P., including Calcutta, Berhampore, Bankipore, Benares, Allahabad, etc. His efforts, I am happy to say, met with success and his lectures have been favourably reported in the press. He ends his tour at Bombay, where he spends a few days and gives lectures. He proposes, all being well, to go on tour again after the Convention.
The Indian National Congress assembles at Nagpur on the 27th December. This will unfortunately keep away some of our members, who are obliged for various reasons to attend it. Next year, however, the Congress is to be held in England, so that we shall have greater facilities for a successful Convention. If Annie Besant can come out then, I think we can promise her a good reception at Adyar.
One of our local members, the Hon. S. Subramania Aiyar, has been elevated to the judicial bench. Our brother is a longstanding Theosophist, and was very active in the 1883 and 1884 days.
A new Branch has just been formed at Erode in the South, and one will probably be formed at Ernakulum. These owe their existence to the exertions of Bro. C. Kottayya, the Inspector of Branches, who is now on tour in the South.
The Madras Branch has just opened its new rooms. They have taken a large house, where there is a hall for lectures and other rooms, including a library. Meetings are held every Sunday, and on every Saturday a Sanskrit Pandit gives lectures in the vernacular on the Bhagavad Gîtâ. Special lectures will also be arranged from time to time.
The press notices of Theosophy still continue to be numerous, and they are on the whole favourable. Owing to the kindness of Bro. John M. Pryse of the American “Press Scheme”, I am supplied with a number of printed paragraphs of Theosophical articles, news, etc., which I am sending to some of the leading papers. Indian papers are almost always glad of foreign news, so I have the pleasure of seeing some of our articles inserted in the papers. We have also been sending them some original articles, and in the Indian Mirror now are appearing some articles on Annie Besant's Life from the pen of Miss Anna Ballard, F.T.S., resident at the Headquarters. The Indianapolis Letters on Theosophy are also appearing as leaders in one of the Madras papers.
We hope next year, if possible, to enlarge the Prasnottara, and put it on a par with its brother, the Vahan, devoting a few pages of it to Theosophical news.
Your correspondent has also been making a short tour, and has visited the Branches at Kumbakonum and Mannargudi (in the South about 200 miles from here). Both the Branches show a considerable amount of activity, the latter in particular. In the former, two of the members, as is well known, employ their time largely in translating Sanskrit books into English. The President of the Mannargudi Branch, Brother A. Nilakanta Sastri, is a most energetic Theosophist; and though President of the Kumbakonum Branch, in reality lives at Mannargudi, and is the life and soul also of that Branch. At the latter place, the Branch has a reading room and a nucleus of a library.
Brother C. Kottayya, the Inspector of Branches, is also away on tour through the Branches in the South, many of which he is engaged in reorganising. Speaking of reorganisation reminds me of the great lack in this respect among most of the Branches in India. Many members work very well individually as Theosophists, but through lack of internal organisation many of the Branches do not accomplish as much practical work as they might. It is hoped, next year, if we can establish Headquarters at Bombay and Calcutta, to have the distant Branches more fully within reach, and we shall then be able to visit them two or three times a year, instead of paying them brief visits once a year, as is the case at the 432 present time. The difficulty of dealing with such a large country as India is well known to all; but if. as I said before, we can succeed in dividing India into Sub-Sections, we shall certainly be able to deal with this large organisation more efficiently.
There is every probability of a large and well-attended Convention; many of the members having expressed their intention of making every possible effort to be present. Already preparations are being made by Babula to provide the necessary accommodation, The Headquarters, to use a vulgar expression, are being generally “done up”.
S. V. E.
Early in November a party of gentlemen from the Colombo Headquarters went to Wekada, a village some miles from the metropolis, to found a boys’ school there. The villagers had built a very pretty schoolroom, a couple of miles from the site of the old one, to meet the educational demands of that neighbourhood, and the staff of the Colombo Headquarters was asked to open the school. This school promises to be one of our very best seats of instruction among the villages.
While the education of our boys is going ahead, the education of our girls cannot be said to be altogether neglected. I have the very pleasing task of announcing to my readers the safe arrival of Mrs. Higgins from America. She has come to take the entire supervision of female education in Ceylon, filling also the post of Lady Principal of the Sangamitta School. Mrs. Higgins is the widow of the founder of the Blavatsky Lodge at Washington, D.C., a very earnest worker for the cause. It was the special wish of Mr. Higgins that his wife should devote her life to Theosophy by teaching the girls in the East, and when she read Mr. P. de Abrew’s letter in the February Path, asking for a worker in that line in Ceylon, she felt that that would be her life’s mission. On the 16th of September she left Washington for her new field of work. She came viâ Germany to bid her aged father good-bye, and to interest her German relations and friends in her work in Ceylon. The result of her work there is shown in the many pretty articles which busy little hands have been making for the intended Fancy Bazaar for the benefit of the Sangamitta School. She reached Colombo at noon on the 15th inst., by the S.S. Preussen. Mr. Peter de Abrew went on board the steamer as soon as it entered the harbour, to welcome Mrs. Higgins, who agreeably surprised him by greeting him with a few Singhalese words, which were well expressed and pronounced. Shortly afterwards Mr. de Abrew brought her on shore, and they drove down to the Sangamitta Girls’ School, which was crowded with a large gathering of Buddhist men, women, and children, waiting to welcome the lady. The school was beautifully decorated with ferns and flowers, &c. She was conducted to her seat, and Miss Louisa Roberts, the first teacher of the school, read an address of welcome, tastefully got up by the teachers and pupils of the school, and to this Mrs. Higgins replied in very suitable terms. This was followed by an address from the W.E.S., read by Miss V. Kumarasinghe. After replying in a few words Mrs. Higgins went up to the school children and spoke to each of them kindly, and the children loaded her with pretty bouquets of flowers. Then the ladies and gentlemen present were introduced to her, and the proceedings terminated shortly after 6 p.m.
A few days after Mrs. Higgins’ arrival, a group photograph of herself and the school was taken by a well-known artist in Colombo, and he has 433 also taken another of the school building and its grounds; this pretty picture shows the “push-push” carriage of H.P.B., which she used at Adyar. Theosophists and friends of the school are invited to kindly take copies of these pictures, the proceeds of the sale of which will go in aid of the sustenation fund of the Sangamitta Girls’ School.
European Section.
The Blavatsky Lodge publishes the following new Syllabus of its Thursday meetings: – Jan. 7th – “Leading Theosophical Conceptions”, G. R. S. Mead. Jan. 14th – “Reincarnation”, Annie Besant. I. What it is that Reincarnates. Jan. 21st – “Reincarnation”, Annie Besant. II. The Method and Results of Reincarnation. Jan. 28th – “Reincarnation”, Annie Besant. III. History and Society in the Light of Reincarnation. Feb. 4th – “Objections to Theosophy Considered and Answered”, Herbert Burrows. I. Scientific Objections. Feb. 11th – “Objections to Theosophy Considered and Answered”, Herbert Burrows. II. Philosophical Objections. Feb. 18th – “Objections to Theosophy Considered and Answered”, Herbert Burrows. III. Religious Objections.
The Bow Club has been providing festivities for its members and friends at Christmas time. Three nights saw the hall crowded, twice with women and girls enjoying supper, followed by an entertainment; and once with children, delighted with a Christmas tree. A sale of very cheap clothing is to be held on the 25th inst., to which Mrs. Raphael and her little band of co-workers are contributing clothes made by them.
The Debating Club at 7, Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C., publishes the following subjects for discussion in January, 1892: – 8th – “Should Theosophists be Propagandists?” Negative – P. W. Bullock. 15th – “Is Denunciation a Duty?” Negative – R. Machell. 22nd – “Is Divination a desirable Practice?” Affirmative – C. Hill. 29th – “Is Life worth living?” Negative – T. Green. The speaking of those who attend the above debates is optional. Members and associates of the Society are invited to take part in the programme.
The Section Library. – W. R. Old, the Librarian, desires to acknowledge with many thanks the receipt of books for the Headquarters’ Library from Mrs. E. Wilkinson, H. T. Edge, and “E. S.” If members will kindly look over their libraries and send to him any books for which they have no further use, they will be doing a practical good. It is of no consequence that the books are not Theosophical or that they are out of repair, for a use can be found for them. The Librarian will be glad to pay the carriage of any packages sent to him.
Annie Besant returned from America on December 16th, and has arranged the following lectures: – Jan. 10th, Bristol; 24th, Loughborough (two); 29th, Brixton; 31st, Merthyr Tydvil; Feb. 1st, Cardiff; 2nd, Pontypridd; 7th, Central Hall, Scrutton Street, London, E.C.; 8th, Carlisle; 9th, Maryport; 10th, Whitehaven; 15th, Bournemouth; 16th, Poole.
The Chiswick Lodge is increasing rapidly. On December 11th Herbert Burrows lectured to an audience of some forty members and visitors, on “Karma and Reincarnation”; and on January 8th, the anniversary of the Lodge, the General Secretary addressed the members.
The Brixton Lodge has removed to new and more commodious premises which will contain an audience of 100. The Lodge is working hard, and is increasing its membership under the presidency of our enthusiastic brother, H. A. W. Coryn. 434 The Battersea Lodge now holds its meeting in new premises, and its Sunday meetings are devoted alternately to set lectures and continuous study. On January 3rd H. A. W. Coryn lectured on “The Practical Import of Theosophy”, and on January 10th J. M. Pryse spoke on the “Study of the Bhagavad Gîtâ”.
The Halifax Centre reports that it is giving lectures and holding meetings for discussion. It organised a meeting addressed by Annie Besant on December 18th.
Stoke-on-Trent. – Our local members inform us that they are doing quiet but effective work. Letters on Theosophy have been inserted in the columns of a leading “daily”.
At Workington on December 17th a large meeting was addressed by Annie Besant, who also spoke three times at Southampton on December 20th, to good audiences.
The Theosophical Glossary, we are glad to announce, is nearing completion. The last page proofs are sent in, and the book will be on sale in the course of a few weeks. The price is fixed at 12s. 6d. It is a work of some 400 pages of the same size as the Secret Doctrine, and contains much valuable information, which H.P.B. alone could give, on Esoteric Philosophy. The information on the Esotericism of the Buddhist system, and in elucidation of the Glossaries of the Voice of the Silence, is especially valuable; and from every point of view it is a book that no student of Theosophy can allow to be absent from his shelves. It can hardly be too much regretted that the Glossary is a posthumous work, for H.P.B. was adding largely to it on the few proofs that came in previous to her departure. In fact she had intended to incorporate a short account of the lives of the great Adepts, which would have still more increased the size and utility of the volume. The editing has naturally been a matter of great difficulty, as it would tax the resources even of the best polyglot scholar to the utmost. The work, however, is completed, and we have one more gift from H.P.B. to us; one all the more precious as being mostly written in the greatest pain and suffering, every line being literally produced by an effort of will in the midst of extreme physical torture. An example for us to the last!
In consequence of the great increase of enquiries about Theosophy, a Staff of Correspondents has been organised, composed of comparatively advanced students, who will put themselves at the service of beginners. Letters of enquiry addressed to the European Headquarters will be handed to some member of this Correspondence Staff, and it is hoped that much assistance may thus be given to those who are taking the first difficult steps in study.
It must not be supposed from the notice in the last issue of Lucifer that the new edition of the Secret Doctrine will shortly be on sale. Many months must elapse ere it makes its appearance in the book market.
The French Centre at Paris has its reading room open every day from nine to six. Several classes for study have been organised. One for the elementary study of Theosophy, one for the more advanced study of the Secret Doctrine, another for Sanskrit, etc. In addition a large monthly gathering has been arranged for. 435
The past month has been marked by a recrudescence of work, principally at Barcelona, where the activity of our propaganda is daily increasing, and our lecture room is each time more and more filled with people desiring to find out about Theosophy. Our Brother Montoliu, whom so many people seek to know after reading his printed articles, is well qualified, by his eloquence and earnest conviction of the truth of Theosophy, to awaken an interest in the auditors. Our relations with the Spiritualists are increasing in cordiality, as also with members of various philosophical societies; we cannot too much congratulate ourselves on this sympathetic current. We have also hopes of having our meetings attended by ladies. Our Headquarters are being made daily more comfortable and ornamental, owing to the generosity of the members, especially of Bros. Montoliu, Roviralta and Bosch. We have also established a Theosophico-Oriental library, with a reading-room open daily, from ten to twelve, to all who come furnished with a card of introduction. The translation of the Secret Doctrine is being brought out in parts. Isis Unveiled will shortly appear in the same manner; we have already received fifty subscriptions, and are going to send out a prospectus containing an index of both volumes, which will doubtless extend our plans considerably. The Voice of the Silence, also translated by Montoliu, is nearly off the press.
The Barcelona group is hard at work, and the Madrid group holds regular meetings and endeavours to spread Theosophy in every possible way; and though the surroundings are unfavourable, the group itself is so earnest and harmonious that it cannot fail to make its influence felt before long. On the whole we do not doubt but that the year 1892 has great successes in store for Theosophy in Spain.
American Section.
The two Branches at Fort Wayne, India, have consolidated into one Branch under the name hitherto borne by the Women’s Branch, that of “The Annie Besant T.S.” The energy of our Fort Wayne Theosophists, under the presidency of Judge E. O'Rourke, has been so great that among other things they have created a demand for no less than 1,000 copies of Esoteric Buddhism.
The work on the Pacific Coast goes on apace, and has received a great impetus by the visit of the General Secretary of the Section, William Q. Judge. “The Golden Gate T.S.” of San Francisco and “The Aurora T.S.” of Oakland publish interesting lists of lectures. One energetic member, Mr. Sydney Thomas, keeps open house, so to say, for Theosophy, and – a thing only possible in California at this time of the year, as far as the present Branch list is concerned – holds open-air meetings at his house for want of space.
“The Narada T.S.” of Tacoma and the Branch at Seattle, Wash., have inaugurated a Lecture Bureau, and will extend their operations to the new Branch at Olympia (the 60th on the roll) which has just been formed.
“The Aryan T.S.” of New York City, has also started a Lecture Bureau; among the lecturers specially mentioned are Miss Kate Hillard and Alexander Fullerton.
The Toledo Theosophists have begun a scheme for circulating Theosophical literature; and the Branch at Baltimore has acquired new and pleasant rooms, with a marked increase in attendance and inquiries. Our Portland (Oreg.) members have also acquired new rooms in the centre of the city, and have opened a free library.
Two pages and a half of The Path are devoted to the report of the 436 remainder of the General Secretary's lecturing tour. Lectures were delivered at Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Lincoln, Sioux City, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago, Fort Wayne, Toledo and Jamestown. The size of the audiences in the Central States reached the highest figures at Fort Wayne, where as many as 1,400 people assembled to hear Mr. Judge.
Our Boston brothers are working hard. A correspondent tells us they are holding classes for the study of the Secret Doctrine and of the Key to Theosophy on alternate Sundays. On Thursdays open lectures are given. On Saturdays a Secret Doctrine class. The League of Theosophical workers meets on Sunday afternoons. A “question class”, and a class for the esoteric study of the Bible are also projected. If this programme be steadily carried out, the “Hub of the Universe” will become a credit to Theosophy.
Annie Besant, during her few days’ stay in America, lectured twice in New York, once in Fort Wayne, and once in Philadelphia. There is some talk of arranging for her a tour through the Central and Western States in the autumn of 1892.
As we go to press we hear from New York that the indefatigable General Secretary is to lecture at Chicago on January 13th and 14th, and before the Secular Liberal Club at New York on January 22nd. We are delighted to say that his health is much better than it was.
Theosophical and Mystic Publications.
The Theosophist for December introduces its pages to the reader with a short article from the pen of our brother S. V. Edge, who deals with the correspondence in the Daily Chronicle, and treats of the bearing of “phenomena” on the theosophical movement. Doubtless it was necessary in the early days of the Society, in order to plough furrows in the field of materialistic science and religion, for the reception of the seeds of Theosophy which were to be sown; but when the seed is sprouting the wise husbandman does not stand gazing at the plough with his hands in his pockets. The translation of Sâdhu Nischaladâs’ exhaustive treatise on the Vedânta philosophy, from Hindustani into Tamil, gives A. Siva Row the opportunity of presenting the reader with a very useful digest of “The Vichâra Sâgara, or Ocean of Enquiry”. It is divided into seven “waves” or chapters. The first deals with the eight means of internal knowledge, leading up to the great formula, the Mahâvâkyam “Tatvamasi” – “That art Thou” – and the rest of the chapters take up the main points of the transcendental metaphysics and psychological practices of the greatest of the Hindu philosophies, ending with an explanation of the meaning of the various forms of religion by the light of the Universal Principle. Purendu Narayan Sinha contributes a paper, “Some Mythologies in Relation to the Vedas”, bringing out strongly one very probable interpretation of the Purânic quarrels of the Rishis, Prajâpatis and Gods, viz., that they allegorise the differences of opinion between the various Brâhmanical sects. This is followed by the first instalment of our contributor “C. J.’s” excellent series of articles on the Secret Doctrine. The correspondence on the Mânushya-gandharvas and the “fawn” symbol has produced another paper from our brother A. Nilakanta Sastri, in the course of which he gives the seven planes of experience to be passed through before the attainment of the Nirmânakâya vesture, allegorised in Vedic terms as: Man, Mânushya-gandharva, Karma-deva, Deva, Indra, Brihaspati, and Brahma. Our brother also suggests the following correspondences between the aspects of the Quaternary and the Purânic “creations”; 437 Sthûla Sharîra – elemental creation; Linga Sharîra – the “Body of Smoke”; Prâna-kâma – creation with base in air; Lower Manas – with base in Soma, the downward aspect of Akâsha. This will prove interesting to Theosophical students of the Paurânic systems, and also his attempt to show the connection between the fawn symbol and the Moon (Soma). The question, we are afraid, however, is somewhat beyond any but the very few Western readers; such bye-ways of esotericism are difficult, especially when the writer hints and says nothing. A Brahmin under the initials T.S.G. writes on “The Brahmins and our Cosmopolitan platform”, and deplores the tendency of a “certain class of Theosophists to cry down everything as exotericism and ritualism”, maintaining that ritualism, even if not understood, is useful in preserving the tradition of the birthright which the Twice-born alone possess. Perhaps the writer is not so familiar with the Western as with the Eastern Shâstras, and has not heard the parable of the man who hid his talent in a napkin. There have been and are “Twice-born” who have never set foot in India, though it is true that the ancestral wealth of Aryavarta in adjuncts to devotion is the greatest extant. Miss Emily Kislingbury concludes her interesting paper on “Modes of Meditation” as practised in the Roman Catholic Church, giving a sketch of the method of the “Retreats”, according to the system of Ignatius Loyala, the founder of the Order of Jesus. The paper will be interesting to students of Mysticism, and to general students as showing one of the reasons why the Roman Catholic Church has within it a potentiality of development which no sect of Protestantism, except the extreme High Church party, possesses. The conclusion of the translation of the Vth Skanda of the Mahâ-Bhâgavata Purâna, under the title “The Episode of Jadabhârata”, follows. In the XIth Adhyâya or “Lecture”, we read:
“Thus the higher mind which has the lower mind as its vehicle body, sees its (the lower mind’s) seemingly real actions in the waking and dreaming states. It also sees the modifications of the lower mind in the dreamless sleeping state. If the lower mind is unaffected, then there is the cognition of the pure reality of Paramâtmâ (the Higher Self). Then, Paramâtmâ (the Higher Self) is cognised by the higher mind – that Higher Self which is the cause of the Universe, the All-full, the Self-shining, the One void of birth, and the rest, and that has the higher mind as its body.”
The conclusion of the translation of “The Sânkhya-tattwa-kaumudi of Vâchaspati Mishra” concludes an interesting but difficult number for Western readers.
The Path for December concludes the article of Pilgrim on “The Ideal and the Practical”, who says:
“Words are of course mere counters which bear different significations in different ages, or to different individuals in the same age, but no mere juggling with the counters will account for a fundamental difference of conception as to the thing, and when a writer (and the point is only accentuated when the writer is so distinguished for ability and wide-mindedness) uses the word quietism as synonymous with apathy, it is similar to mistaking the top rung of the ladder for the bottom one – an absolute perversion of vision. A little knowledge of the Vedic philosophy teaches that the active emotional nature of one lit with the fire of Passion (Rajas) is greatly superior to the apathy of one sunk in the ignorance of Sloth (Tamas), but far above the passionate nature stands the one who has transferred his nature from the outer to the inner plane, and has thereby attained some amount of equilibrium, some amount of self-control. When the inner struggle is continued with such intensity – aided and guided by the concentration on the Supreme – that all outer things lose their importance, a stage of ‘quietism’ is reached, which in external appearance may resemble the debased apathy of the ignorant boor, but does it not imply absolute perversion of vision to mistake the sublime height of Serenity (Sattva) for the depth of ignorant sloth?’
Every Theosophist should endeavour to understand the philosophy of the three Gunas or Qualities above mentioned. Spirit, Mind and Matter are in equilibrium in the Great Mind, and conscious union with That will manifest itself on all planes and in all departments of life, and so restore the harmony which at present is not among men. Eusebio Urban next administers a prudent rebuke to those who imagine that intellectual assent to an ideal constitutes its practical realisation; and points out the impossibility of cutting out of the human heart its natural feelings, as some foolishly imagine may be done, characterising such short-sightedness in the title “Hypocrisy or Ignorance”. “The Vision of Horil”, in the usual orthodox diction of visions, prefaces an excellent paper by Miss Katharine Hillard, on “The First Object of the T.S.” K.W. follows with a bright and amusing paper on “Cranks” “The Plagues of our Public Meetings”. We sympathize with the writer and can fully endorse his experience on this side of the “Pond”. But we also remember a slashing article on Cranks in some American paper, which ended with the words “Galileo was a Crank, Plato was a Crank, Jesus was a Crank! God bless Cranks!” A Hindu, under the nom de plume of “François Flamel” contributes a very valuable 438 article on the Upanishads, speaking in no measured terms of the responsibility assumed by those who translate the practical Yoga portions of them. Of the 108 existing Upanishads in the Telugu edition, only ten are quoted from by Shri Shankarâchârya, and these are all free from the defects the writer takes objection to, following in this the repeated warnings of H.P.B. We say again, it is an important article. Julius, in “Tea Table Talk”, shows how readily children take to the simple truths of Theosophy. William Brehon concludes the number with a well merited rebuke to Mr. Herbert Spencer's self-sufficiency in neglecting to study the philosophy of even so near a predecessor as Kant. Mr. Spencer’s “discoveries” are often found to have been anticipated by generations of thinkers.
The Buddhist should be more careful of the selection of its papers. There is an article which endeavours to trace a Buddhist origin in such words as Eloha, Adoni, &c., and which displays a remarkable ignorance of Hebrew, and we should also think of Pâli and Sanskrit. Eloha is given as a copy of Arhan; Adoni of Pradhâna, &c.! We should also like to see more Buddhism and less reprints from Western writers in the pages of our contemporary. The Jâtakas, or “Birth Stories”, are very interesting, but like the Purânas are not of much value to the ordinary reader without a key, except of course in so far as the moral teaching contained therein is concerned. Annotations to certain texts also should be added, unless it is desired to confirm the public mind in the belief that Buddhism is pessimistic and agnostic in the last degree. For instance, what can be said in defence of such a doubt-creating text as the following?
“O monks, you should think of the four elements – earth, air, water and fire, for of these is the body made up. To-day they are temporarily united as a manifestation of life; and to-morrow they are disunited, as a manifestation of death. O monks, where is the element ‘Self’, which is eternal? After all, is there any ‘Self’? Truly, life is only a bubble on the sea of time!”
If the Self is eternal, why the query: “is there any Self?”
Le Lotus Bleu for December is without doubt the best number so far produced. Our French magazine is really showing signs of study and enthusiasm, which put us in mind of the best days of the old Lotus. This number is noteworthy for several remarkable diagrams and tables. In the “Introduction to the Study of the Secret Doctrine” a page is devoted to two diagrams, the first showing six concentric circles in lines of graduated thickness, giving the correspondences between the macrocosmic and microcosmic principles, planets, elements, &c., and much else; the second giving a figure of the Planetary Chain with series of concentric circles to mark the degrees of matter, by way of a mnemonic. These diagrams should be seen by all students of the Secret Doctrine. Another excellent article is “L’évolution d’après l’Advaita”, which contains a figurative representation of the Tatwas, a table exemplifying the principle of Panchikâranam or the quintuplication of the elements, and a reprint of the synthetic table of the Vedântic evolutionary system taken from M. N. Dvivedi’s excellent book, Monism or Advaitism? Another matter on which to congratulate the editor is the enthusiasm with which the Vâhan columns, so to say, or “Tribune Théosophique”, are conducted: pages of valuable information are thus given to the reader. We heartily congratulate “la redaction” with a Virgilian “Macte virtute esto!”
The Vahan is a very interesting number this month, especially the answers to the question on the antiquity of the Sabbath and of the seven days of the week. The mystical meaning of the Sabbath is given as expounded by H. P. B. The question as to the resistance or non-resistance to evil, and whether or not a Theosophist may engage in a libel suit, is fully treated, and the number is headed by a strong protest by W. Q. Judge against the ignorant practice of Hatha Yoga.
The Prasnottara has an interesting answer on Mukti (Freedom or Release) or Nirvâna.
“No Vedântic writers, the great Shankârâchârya included, are able to give an idea of what Mukti is and how a Mukta feels and acts. The reader is puzzled to realise that he is himself the knower, himself the knowledge, and himself the known. . . . But because we finite mortals are not able to realize what is called Mukti, it is no reason that it does not exist, and so let us call it the state of Nârâyana as it is by the Hindû Paurânikas, or Paranirvâna, as it is called by the trans-Himalayan religious philosophers. It is called Mukti by the true Vedântists, and the Supreme Abode of Vishnu in the Vedas and Purânas. Let us imagine a Supreme Light, or the First Space, that serves as the body of Nârâyana, and also acts as a universal screen which keeps the Supreme Mystery from the cognizance of all entities, from the highest Yôgis downwards. This Light, or Space, is the Lakshmi of our Purânas, who 439 ever forms the Body for her Soul – the Over-Soul of the Universe.”
Teosofisk Tidskrift, our Swedish magazine, commences with the translation of the President-Founder’s public lecture in Stockholm, during his recent visit, entitled “Theosophy from all Points of View”. “A Good Old Precept”, by F. Kellberg, follows. The old maxim is, “We must learn to direct our thoughts”. A translation of an article in the T.P.S. on Reincarnation, and an extract from the “Indianapolis Letters on Theosophy”, by our brother Alexander Fullerton, whose sensible letters are being extensively translated and reprinted, brings us to a short “Conversation with Myself”, from the pen of Dr. G. Zander, the indefatigable President of the Swedish Branch, which, together with a judicious précis of Activities, brings a very useful number to a close.
Pauses, the monthly organ of our Bombay Theosophists, after some verses, introduces us to a short paper, in which Jehangir Sorabji attempts twenty-two answers to the question “Why Theosophy?” and in which he has managed to condense many Theosophical ideas. W. Beale follows with a short article on “What is Life?” which he naturally divides into two aspects, the inner and outer, or the higher and lower, justly asserting that the object of life for us is “to conquer our passional nature, and gradually so subdue the animal-man that the God may become ascendant in us, and our light shine before men”. Well selected reprints, especially “Some Words on Daily Life”, by a “Master of Wisdom”, which appeared in our own pages, make a useful number, which concludes with the following beautiful Suffee fable:
“The Soul knocked at the door, and a voice from within cried, ‘Who is there?’ Then the Soul answered, ‘It is I’. And the voice of God said, ‘This house will not hold me and you’. So the door remained shut. Then the Soul went away into the wilderness, and after long fasting and prayer it returned, and knocked once again at the door. And again the voice demanded, ‘Who is there?’ Then the Soul said, ‘It is thou’, and at once the door opened to the Soul.”
Estudios Teosoficos, our Spanish periodical, continues its fortnightly publications, with well-selected translations and sensible original contributions. There is a good sprinkling of articles on Eastern Philosophy, and we notice with pleasure a scheme for supplying readers with mimeographed translations from portions of the Secret Doctrine. In spite of the extraordinary activity of our Spanish brethren, it is not difficult to see that they possess a reserved force of strength which is continually displaying itself. O si sic omnes! We have received a bound volume of the “Série Primera” of the Estudios, from February to October, which forms a most useful collection of
Theosophical instruction. We have also received bound copies of W. Q. Judge's Ecos del Oriente (Echoes from the Orient), which we have already noticed. It is excellently translated by D. Senor F. Montoliu, and adds one more leaf to his literary laurels.
Branch Papers. Among the most recent we notice with pleasure the paper read before the Golden Gate Lodge, San Francisco, by Mr. Geo. P. Keeney. The amount of matter he has managed to condense into the space at his disposal is extraordinary. For the Indian Section, Dr. D. J. Edal Behran, of the Surat T.S., writes at length on “The Right Knowledge of the Real and Unreal”. This is a useful paper, seeing that it condenses the fundamental postulates of Esoteric Philosophy from the Secret Doctrine. The analysis of the Pranava Om (Aum), however, is by no means sufficient. If the Agni, Varuna and the Maruts of the Veda and the Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas of Theosophy are identical, and the factors of the Aum, then the correspondence of the first letter A to the waking state (Jagrat), of the second U to the dreaming state (Svapna), and of the third M to the deep sleeping (Sushupti), would be hardly reconcilable.
The Transactions of the Scottish Lodge. We are exceedingly glad to welcome these Transactions, as a sign of the ever-growing activity of our Lodge “over the border”. Passing by the Introduction, we come to an excellent paper by the Vice-President on “Alchemy and the Alchemists”. The writer runs over the historical side of the Art, giving most space to Nicolas Flamel and Paracelsus, and concludes with the opinion that the Alchemical receipts “are to be taken literally, though the processes and materials themselves may receive a mystic interpretation”. But should we not reverse the order of the above sentence, and rather conclude that the Hermetic Art was originally a knowledge of the spiritual or subtle elements in man and the universe, which can be translated by correspondence into the grosser or material elements, on any of the lower 440 planes, including our own? The President’s paper on “Occult Science in its Relation to Physical Science” concludes this first number, and is an exceedingly clear exposition of the subject. Very wisely does he say: –
“The laws governing the whole universe are the same as those which govern a grain of sand, which is a universe in miniature, and vice versâ; therefore we have always at hand, if we know the correspondences, microscopes and telescopes wherewith we can investigate physical laws. An anthill or beehive may be a highly magnified crystal.”
New Pamphlets. Theosophy made Easy is a useful little pamphlet of twenty-eight pages, by Major W. Hudson Hand, and is written to catch the attention of those who are too busy or too lazy to study for themselves. Therefore the subjects are treated of in a series of paragraphs, each with a distinct head-line, which will catch the roving eye of the “busy person”. We believe that the substance of the matter originally appeared in the columns of one of our largest provincial dailies.
The New Californian, of San Francisco, edited by our brother Dr. Jerome A. Anderson, contains the continuation of the editor’s interesting paper on Hypnotism, in which he quotes largely from H.P.B.’s article in Vol. vii., No. 40, of Lucifer. This is followed by an abstract of one of William Q. Judge’s lectures on “The Inner Constitution of Man”. Among other papers to notice is Brother Wolleb’s article on “Theosophy and Socialism”, which concludes with the words: “It will require almost super-human wisdom and self-abnegation to unite its many streamlets into one mighty, irresistible current. To Theosophy must it look for these elements.”
Our Budget.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Half surplus, Liverpool lecture, per Liverpool Lodge | 16 | 12 | 0 |
| Half surplus, Halifax lecture, per Halifax Lodge | 2 | 6 | 2 |
| Surplus, Workington Lecture | 0 | 16 | 1 |
| 19 | 14 | 3 |
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. Kislingbury | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Friends on Board “City of Paris” | 5 | 5 | 0 |
| Jumble Sale | 15 | 3 | 2½ |
| Lady Meux | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| B. W. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| H. V. A. | 30 | 0 | 0 |
| E. W. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| 102 | 18 | 2½ |
There has also been sent for the aid of the approaching sale: –
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| H. S. Green | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| F. C. H. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Nemo | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| A. E. B. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| 2 | 12 | 6 |
441
Theosophy and the Theosophical Society.
An address delivered by the Rev. G. W. Allen before the London Spiritualistic Alliance, in November last, has only just been brought to my notice. It appeared in Light (November 28th), a journal that I see every week by the courtesy of its Editor, and my missing it was due to my absence from England. The questions raised by Mr. Allen are so interesting that, though late in the day, I am tempted to take them up; and it may be that there are others also who would like to say something in the pages of Lucifer on the points at issue.
Mr. Allen entitled his paper, “Our Eastern Theosophists and what we are to say to them”, and he began by expressing the wish that it might be the means of drawing from the Theosophists of the Theosophical Society “some definite pronouncement as to what attitude they intend to take towards those whose apprehensions differ from their own”. This wish seems to me to be doomed to disappointment, if it means that the Theosophical Society should make such a pronouncement, for the Society has no views quâ Society, save that it desires to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood, that it promotes the study of Aryan literature, and the investigation of the powers in nature and man which are as yet hidden or latent. The last two even of these objects are not conditions of membership, though as they are officially announced as “objects”, the Society may fairly, as a whole, be held to be answerable for them. Outside these, the “Theosophical 442 Society” cannot be said to have any views, although it contains members holding a great variety of views. Each member has an equal right to his own opinions, and no fellow-member has any right of challenging another. The Christian who asserts the Deity of Jesus of Nazareth has quite as much right in the Society as the Jew who believes him to have been an impostor, and the sceptic who regards him as a solar myth.
Mr. Allen says that “no one can take up Lucifer, or listen to a lecture of Mrs. Besant’s, without being quite sure that Theosophy is now not a study of Truth so much as a promulgation of a certain view of Truth”. If anyone take up Lucifer he will find there many opinions; for instance, Mr. Brodie Innes for many months was occupied in justifying the Church, and was finally opposed and answered by Mr. Mead. Mr. Maitland has given a series of articles to maintain and elucidate the conception of “The Esoteric Christ”. The Editor is completely in opposition to the views of Mr. Brodie Innes, and does not agree with those of Mr. Maitland, yet each has had full and free opportunity of setting them forth, and no one has suggested that such views are “misapprehensions which any intelligent person ought to be ashamed of holding”. Not only so, but the Editor, only in last October, wrote: –
“The Theosophical Society has no creed. It is not Christian nor Buddhist; it is not Theistic nor Atheistic; it is not Materialistic nor Spiritualistic. It embraces men of all creeds and of none. Does anyone recognise the Brotherhood of all men ? Then to him its doors are flung widely open, and the clasp of Brotherhood is offered. None may challenge his right of entry, nor bid him stand aside.”
So far as Lucifer is concerned, then, there has been no challenge of the position of the Theosophical Society; but if there had been, the Theosophical Society would be in no sense responsible for the Luciferian aberration, in that Lucifer is not official and has no official weight; it helps the Society wherever it can, but is absolutely without authority.
Nor have I ever, in any lecture, asserted that the Theosophical Society is, or should be, narrowed down to the acceptance of any particular views. Had I done so, then again the fault would have been mine, and the Society would not have been in any way to blame, for I hold no official position in the Society, save the very humble one of President of one of the Lodges in London.
But, says Mr. Allen, “I know that I could not join the Theosophical Society without being forced to hear dogmas put forward as Theosophy par excellence which I do not believe”. But indeed Mr. Allen is mistaken. He can join the Theosophical Society and 443 hear no more of the views of the members with which he disagrees, than he hears as a non-member. He would be as free to oppose those views as a member as he is now free to oppose them, being a non-member. The Society is perfectly neutral ground, and no weight attaches to the arguments of any member save such weight as he may give them by his reasoning powers or his character; and such weight attaches to them equally without the Society as within it. It is personal, not official.
Again, Mr. Allen says that the position of the Society to-day
“Is, as I understand it, very different indeed from that which the Society first took up. Then, their central idea was to promote brotherhood irrespective of differences of race and creed, and to draw attention to phases of enquiry which were being generally neglected – Eastern philosophical systems and the occult faculties in man. Now, their study of Eastern systems has blossomed into a definite creed, which is everywhere preached as ‘Theosophy’.”
In this passage – and it contains the gist of the whole of Mr. Allen’s argument – there seem to me to be two salient errors: a statement that there is a change in the position of the Society; a confusion of Theosophy with the Theosophical Society.
Certainly, the position of the Society is unchanged. Its objects and rules are as they were, and are binding on members until those members change them. But has the position even of “prominent members” changed? From the very first, prominent members put forward a certain definite system which they called “Theosophy”, to which they proclaimed their adhesion in no faltering terms. Let us glance for a moment at the view taken by H. P. Blavatsky herself, at once a Founder of the Society and the “transmitter” of a distinct system of philosophy; no one who reads the Introduction to vol. i. of the Secret Doctrine can have any doubt that she claimed to be putting forward or, if the words be preferred, to be preaching or promulgating a part of a definite philosophy, called by her the Wisdom Religion, Theosophy, the Esoteric Doctrine, the Esoteric Philosophy, etc. She speaks of the “actual existence of a Parent Doctrine”; “the existence of one primeval, universal Wisdom”; religious “founders were all transmitters, not original teachers”; “The Wisdom Religion is the inheritance of all the nations, the world over”; “The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages. . . . . The system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. That it is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers”; and she goes on to speak of “the fundamental Law in that system”, “the fundamental conception of the system”, and so on. Yet she, who thus so definitely put forward a system of doctrine, none the less 444 insisted that the Theosophical Society should embrace men of all creeds, and should never make the acceptance of Theosophy as a system a condition of admission to the Theosophical Society. The Society was to serve as a bond of union, and to be content to slowly influence the thoughts of men by its wide tolerance and generous welcome of the earnest of any and of every creed. If it continued to refuse to erect exclusive barriers, it would continue to last as a force for good. Then, she said:
It will gradually leaven and permeate the great mass of thinking and intelligent people with its large-minded and noble ideas of Religion, Duty and Philanthropy. Slowly but surely it will burst asunder the iron fetters of creeds and dogmas, of social and caste prejudices; it will break down racial and national antipathies and barriers, and will open the way to the practical realization of the brotherhood of all men. Through its teaching, through the philosophy which it has rendered accessible and intelligible to the mind, the West will learn to understand and appreciate the East at its true value. Further, the development of the psychic powers and faculties, the premonitory symptoms of which are already visible in America, will proceed healthily and normally. Mankind will be saved from the terrible dangers, both mental and bodily, which are inevitable when that unfolding takes place, as it threatens to do, in a hotbed of selfishness and all evil passions. Man's mental and psychic growth will proceed in harmony with his moral improvement, while his material surroundings will reflect the peace and fraternal goodwill which will remain in his mind, instead of the discord and strife which are everywhere apparent around us to-day.
Surely it cannot be said that they are changing the position of the Society who continue to insist that absolute freedom of opinion shall be the right of its members, yet who – happening to be adherents of the Wisdom Religion – put forward its definite body of teaching as “Theosophy”. The name has historically represented this system, and it is inconvenient to change a name long associated with a school of thought.
One of the earliest expounders of Theosophy to the present generation was Mr. A. P. Sinnett: he was one also of the early adherents of the Society. He has certainly no doubt that a definite philosophy exists now “preached as Theosophy”. He begins his Occult World with the statement: “There is a school of philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight. . . . The wisdom of the ancient world – science and religion commingled, physics and metaphysics combined – was a reality, and it still survives. It is that which will be spoken of in these pages as Occult Philosophy.” Mr. Sinnett’s second well-known book, Esoteric Buddhism, puts forward this same Occult Philosophy as a definite system, clearly and plainly. And it is the setting forth of this system that has been the 445 objective point of all Mr. Sinnett’s efforts. Yet Mr. Sinnett has never shown any desire to alter the wide platform of the Theosophical Society, nor has he made any attempt to commit the Society, as a Society, to the official sanctioning of these teachings.
I might give other instances to prove this same point, that while the Society has been open to all, Theosophy has always been preached by the most prominent members as a definite system of philosophy. Nothing more is being done now. Most certainly in my lectures I promulgate a certain view of Truth, known as Theosophy, following in this the eminent examples who have familiarised the Western World with the teachings of the Wisdom Religion. But as this is not the introduction of a new policy but the following of the old policy, there can be no reason for changing the platform of the Society. There have always been in the Society members who do not accept the Esoteric Philosophy, and their status is as undoubted and as honourable as that of those who accept it. The latter members never dream of complaining when the former signify their dissent from the teachings of the Wisdom Religion. Why should not those who assent to them have equal liberty to proclaim that assent, and liberty also to do their best to spread views which they believe to be useful to the modern world? They do not commit the Society to these views, but it would indeed be a strange thing if adherents of the Esoteric Philosophy were the only people denied admission to, or liberty within, the Theosophical Society.
Mr. Allen not only makes the mistake of taking as a new thing the definite teaching of Theosophy by prominent members of the Theosophical Society, but he further confounds the Theosophical Society and Theosophy. Yet H. P. Blavatsky always very strongly insisted on the distinction. (See, for example, The Key to Theosophy, pp. 19-25.) “Every member”, she writes, “must be a philanthropist, or a scholar, a searcher into Aryan and other old literature, or a psychic student. In short, he has to help, if he can, in the carrying out of at least one of the objects of the programme. Otherwise he has no reason for becoming a Fellow. . . . These may, or may not, become Theosophists de facto.” Again, there may be Theosophists, as she says, who are not members of the Society at all. No one has the right to deny the name to an adherent of the Esoteric Philosophy, merely because he is not enrolled in a particular Society.
The truth is that the name “Theosophist” is used in various senses. It is applied, loosely, to all members of the T.S., whether or not they accept Theosophical teachings. It is used in an intellectual sense, to denote those who accept a certain definite system of 446 Philosophy. And sometimes it is used as describing one who fulfils the loftiest moral ideal, a sense in which it would be applicable, if at all, only to one or two persons in a generation. Thus we find a Master writing:
“He who does not practise Altruism; he who is not prepared to share his last morsel with a weaker or poorer than himself; he who neglects to help his brother man, of whatever race, nation, or creed, whenever and wherever he meets suffering, and who turns a deaf ear to the cry of human misery; he who hears an innocent person slandered, whether a brother Theosophist or not, and does not undertake his defence as he would undertake his own – is no Theosophist.”
In this sense, few indeed can be Theosophists, save in aspiration.
It will now be seen that it is quite impossible to meet Mr. Allen’s wish, and to change the platform of the Society. He says:
“Now, I am not blaming the Theosophical Society for being more dogmatic in teaching now than of yore. I only want it to acknowledge the fact, and say plainly: ‘The Theosophical Society now exists for the purpose of uniting in one organisation all persons, of whatsoever race or creed, who can accept the doctrines of an Unknowable God, of Karma, of Re-incarnation, of human Free Will, and the absolute responsibility of every man for himself and his future.’ Such a position is perfectly logical and worthy. The old position of uniting men without any regard to differences of philosophical or non-philosophical apprehension was a fine ideal, but too fine to be practicable. Mankind is not yet sufficiently advanced to be capable of it.”
To do this would be to destroy the objects for which the Theosophical Society was founded. Many members may study Aryan literature, or physical science, and yet not believe in Karma and Reincarnation. The basis of the Society is action, not belief. “To form the nucleus”, to “study”, to “investigate”, not to hold any particular opinions, was the platform chosen by the Founders and accepted ever since by the members. Why should the Society change its ground, and why should Mr. Allen – not even a member of it – wish it to change its ground? It injures no one, intrudes upon no one, seeks to coerce no one. Why should it be asked to commit suicide, and then to reincarnate in another form? Surely it may be left to exist, and to carry on its own work !
Mr. Allen objects to the high ideal of the Society, and thinks it “too fine to be practicable”. Farther on he says that “in aiming at Universal Brotherhood the Theosophical Society is aiming too high. Higher even than their leading men can reach.” But can we aim too high, and is the poor limit of our realization to fix the height of our ideal? Surely it is well to have a lofty ideal, though we may fall far 447 short thereof, for failure to reach the highest is more elevating than contentment with the low.
“The next thing”, says Mr. Allen, “I would suggest that we have to say to the Theosophical Society is: ‘Try to preach your own view without seeming to assume that those whose apprehensions differ from yours are philosophically incapable’.” And on this he tells a “good story”, in which a “prominent member of the Society” says to a gentleman: “The Christo-Theosophical Society is very well for people who are intellectually incapable of joining us. If I came across a man for whom our teaching was too advanced, I should advise him to go to the Christo-Theosophical Society.” Mr. Allen did not hear this remark himself, and it may easily have been coloured in the repetition of it. It may have been said lightly, in good-humoured criticism, or as the last word of a conversation modified by what went before. In any case, “the Theosophical Society” does not say that a person is “philosophically incapable”, because one of its members is reported to have made an irresponsible and even unwise remark.
The question submitted is: Does the Theosophical Society claim that only those who “seek initiation in their organization” can reach a certain “fount of truth”, and does the Society commit itself
To the position that there is upon earth, and has always been, a sort of Bureau of Truth with all its staff of principals and subordinates, and a definite policy to carry out; from which, as from a centre, have come all great teachers and prophets, whose messages have ever been one and the same, but have got perverted and misrepresented by the churches and organisations which professed to preserve and perpetuate them?
Certainly the Society commits itself to no such statement. In fact the Society says nothing on the subject. H. P. Blavatsky did say that there was a great Brotherhood of Sages, or Initiates, scattered over the whole globe, who were the custodians of the accumulated body of knowledge spoken of as Esoteric or Occult Philosophy, and that all the great religious Teachers have been members of that Brotherhood. Also that every exoteric religion possessed fragments of the Truth, however overlaid they might, in course of time, have become. In founding the Society she claimed to be acting as a messenger from that Brotherhood, but she did not make the acceptance of her message a condition of entry into the Society, and the Society is not committed to her view.
Nor did she ever dream of saying that only by way of the Theosophical Society could the Brotherhood be reached. That Brotherhood acts in many ways, by many methods, and the Theosophical Society is only one of the many agencies through which They work for the elevation of mankind. 448 Nor is it even necessary that a seeker after Truth should find the Brotherhood in order to find Truth. As Mr. Allen says, “Truth is a universal omnipresent vibration”, and a man may place himself directly in rapport with it. But she used to say that while a person might start on his way by himself and grope on alone, he would be like one who would reject all that mathematical science had done and insist on building it up again for himself. If he had strength, and time, and genius, sufficient for the task, he might build up mathematics from their foundation, for the facts were as free to him as to the great master-builders of the science. His success would be problematical, and he would be unwise to place himself in the position of the first investigator by rejecting the stores of accumulated mathematical knowledge; but he might do so. This truth also is “as free as air”, but the “bureau” composed of mathematicians all the world over is a useful institution for those who want to reach mathematical knowledge within the limits of one short life.
Mr. Allen passes on to discuss certain philosophical problems, but into these I will not follow him. I have only sought here, in all courtesy and good-will, to point out, in answer to his challenge, some errors of statement into which he appears to me to have fallen. And I venture to say that the Theosophical Society is just the very place for Mr. Allen, leaving him free, as it does, to hold and to teach his own views, just as, on the other hand, it leaves me free to hold and to teach what I have learned of the Esoteric Philosophy. Those of us who believe in the Brotherhood, and who seek to spread in the Western World the characteristic teachings of that which is now “preached as ‘Theosophy’”, do not seek to impose these views on the Society, but we claim the right to hold and teach them, while remaining members of the Society. Strange indeed would it be if the promulgation of the message brought by the chief Founder of the Society, views taught also by the other two Founders, should be forbidden to members of that Society. All that such members are bound to do is to avoid all temptation of imposing these views on others as a condition of membership or of good standing in the Society.
Such, personally, is my answer to Mr. Allen’s friendly challenge. It seems to me that we might well be brothers within the broad limits of the Theosophical Society, content to differ on many philosophical doctrines. His difference from me in no way detracts, in my mind, from the respect due to his keen intellect and to his value as a mystical 449 thinker. Truth is too great for any one of us to grasp it, too many-sided for any one of us to see. If some of us have found aid from great spiritual Seers, standing at heights that as yet we may not reach, surely our brethren need not grudge it to us, since we force it not on them, but only offer it to any who desire to share it with us. Wealth has been placed in our hands to give to the poor; why blame us that we scatter it to those who wish for it, having no desire to force it on any who say that it is dross, not gold. Here, as in other things, let us try to follow the Law of Liberty, and not transgress the Law of Love; for all servants of Truth have their faces set in the same direction, and though the ways thereto be many, they will lead us to the goal at last.
A Bewitched Life
462 A new work by the Hon. Alexander Aksakov, of St. Petersburg, has lately appeared, entitled Animismus und Spiritismus. It is in two volumes, and is published by Oscar Mutze, at Leipzig. The services rendered by this distinguished author to psychological science in Germany and Russia, by his researches in the domain of psychism and his investigation of its phenomena during a long series of years, entitle his works to the consideration of every student.
The Law of Cycles
Fragments from an Indian Note Book
475
[Prof. Max Muller on Indian philosophy]
Prof. Max Muller, in one of the course of Gifford lectures now being delivered, dealt with the attempts made to explain the relation of the soul to God, “the divine homesickness” so characteristic of man. The Brahmans asserted that what was divine in man was one with that which was divine in God, and that our true self was the Self that is All in All. The Indian philosophy had never yet attracted the attention it deserved, and Western philosophers were too apt to disregard all that did not come from Greece and use the Greek terminology. During centuries, in India, not only with priests but with nobles, men and women, religion and philosophy had formed the one absorbing subject of meditation, and the invisible life, the life to come, was the real life. Whoever caught a new ray of truth became the centre of attraction; he was looked on as holding a position far above that of kings and princes, and was sought by all. There had been nothing like this side of the life of ancient India in the rest of the world. There nature was bountiful and the necessaries of life few; the people, endowed with transcendent intellect, troubled with little struggle for existence, looked on life, not as a gladiatorial arena, but as a waiting-room at a station on a journey, a journey that from their very ignorance of its end stirred their curiosity as to whence they came and whither they were going. The Indian philosophy was unique, and deserved our most careful attention.
Reincarnation
484
Gems from the Upanishads.
O saint, we bow before thee; teach thou, for thou art the way, and there is no other for us. What process is there for the Elemental Self, by which, after leaving this (identity with elemental body), he obtains union with the (true) Self?
In the beginning Brahman was all this. He was one, and infinite; infinite in the East, infinite in the South, infinite in the West, infinite in the North, above and below and everywhere infinite. East and the other regions do not exist for him, nor across, nor above, nor below. The Highest Self is not to be defined, he is unlimited, unborn, not to be reasoned about, not to be conceived. He is like the ether (everywhere), and at the destruction of the universe, he alone is awake. Thus from that ether he wakes all this world, which consists of thought only, and by him alone is all this meditated on, and in him it is dissolved.
Because in this manner he joins the Prâna (breath), the Om, and this Universe in its manifold forms, or because they join themselves (to him), therefore this (process of meditation) is called Yoga (joining).
The oneness of breath, mind, and senses, and then the surrendering of all conceptions, that is called Yoga.
If a man could not understand it (Brahman) before the falling asunder of his body, then he has to take body again in the worlds of creation.
That Self cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. The Self chooses him (his body) as his own.
But he who has not first turned away from his wickedness, who is not tranquil and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, he can never obtain the Self (even) by knowledge.
There are the two, drinking their reward in the world of their own works, entered into the cave (of the heart), dwelling on the highest summit (the ether in the heart). Those who know Brahman call them shade and light. . . . . May we be able to master that Nâkiketa rite which is a bridge for sacrificers; also that which is the highest, imperishable Brahman for those who wish to cross over to the fearless shore.
His form is not to be seen, no one beholds him with the eye. He is imagined by the heart, by wisdom, by the mind. Those who know this are immortal.
When the five instruments of knowledge stand still together with the mind, and when the intellect does not move, that is called the highest state. 485 This the firm holding back of the senses, is what is called Yoga. He must be free from thoughtlessness then, for Yoga comes and goes.
When all desires that dwell in the heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal and obtains Brahman.
When all the ties of the heart (ignorance, passion, &c.) are severed here on earth, then the mortal becomes immortal – here ends the teaching.
Next there are verily three worlds, the world of men, the world of the Fathers, the world of the Devas. The world of men can be gained by action only, not by any other work. By sacrifice the world of the Fathers, by knowledge the world of the Devas is gained. The world of the Devas is the best of worlds, therefore they praise knowledge.
For when there is as it were duality, then one sees the other, one smells the other, one hears the other, one salutes the other, one perceives the other, one knows the other; but when the Self only is all this, how should he smell another, how should he see another, how should he hear another, how should he salute another, how should he perceive another ? How should he know Him by whom he knows all this? How, O beloved, should he know (himself), the Knower ?
There are two, one knowing (îsvara) the other not knowing (jîva), both unborn, one strong, the other weak; there is he, the unborn, through whom each man receives the recompense of his works: and there is the infinite Self (appearing) under all forms, but himself inactive. When a man finds out these three, that is Brahma.
From that Self (Brahman) sprang ether (âkâsha, that through which we hear); from ether air (that through which we hear and feel); from air fire (that through which we hear, feel, and see); from fire water (that through which we hear, feel, see, and taste); from water earth (that through which we hear, feel, see, taste, and smell). From earth herbs, from herbs food, from food seed, from seed man. Man thus consists of the essence of food.
That which is perishable is the Pradhâna (the first), the immortal and imperishable is Hara. The one God rules the perishable (the Pradhâna) and the living self. From meditating on him, from joining him, from becoming one with him there is further cessation of all illusion in the end.
When that God is known, all fetters fall off, sufferings are destroyed and birth and death cease. From meditating on him there arises on the dissolution of the body, the third state, that of universal lordship; but he only who is alone, is satisfied.
As oil in seeds, as butter in cream, as water in (dry) river-beds, as fire in wood, so is the Self seized within the self, if man looks for him by truthfulness and penance.
[The Rationale of Mesmerism]
We hear that Mr. A. P. Sinnett, the well known author of Esoteric Buddhism and of the Occult World, has in the press a new work, entitled The Rationale of Mesmerism. It will be published on the 20th inst. by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. We understand that it is an attempt to explain the phenomena of Mesmerism in a systematic manner by the help of Occult Science, and that it is largely based on Mr. Sinnett’s own investigations. It is quite time that a student of Occult Science should enter the Western field, now wholly occupied by scientific enquirers of the Materialistic cast.
Karma and Reincarnation
493
An Outline of the “Secret Doctrine”.
In the earliest and highest form of manifestation, of differentiated life, when the twin powers of the soul, Consciousness and Will – the power to perceive and the power to give birth to perceptions – have only received the first faint tendency to separate, nothing yet exists of objectivity but the latent power of Will to render itself objective, the latent tendency in Will, which is the generator of objectivity, to give birth to the perceptions, images, and sensations, which are to become the objects of Consciousness.
The hardly-separated souls, in all of whom collectively this Will – the parent of objectivity – resides, are, as we have seen, grouped into sevenfold hosts of formative powers.
Of this first and highest range of manifested life it is impossible to say more than that in it spring up the first possibility of differentiation and the first possibility of objectivity, which are afterwards to become fully realised actualities in the lower and later ranges of manifestation.
On the second range of manifestation, we have this tendency to separation further developed and perfected; the tendency to separation widens the gulf between Consciousness the perceiver, and Will the generator of perceptions. This tendency to separation, this link between subject and object, is Perception; in virtue of which alone objects have any reality to consciousness. Perception is the link, the go-between, the messenger between objects and consciousness; this messenger brings to consciousness the message of the form, nature, and intensity of the objective existence perceived; and, as we have said, it is solely and only through the power of this intermediary that objects have any reality at all. In pure philosophy the existence of any object except in relation to consciousness, is utterly unthinkable; if for a moment it be thought possible to conceive of any object not in relation to consciousness, this very thought binds the object thus conceived to consciousness, and the idea that it can be conceived independently is a pure illusion. Absolutely the only test of the existence of any object is its power of being present to consciousness, and all objects are thus seen to be entirely dependent on, and subordinate to, consciousness. 494 Further, if any object should cease, even for an instant, to stand in relation to some form of consciousness, it is quite inconceivable that the link broken could ever be re-established. Objects, therefore, are absolutely dependent for their reality on consciousness; and they must, to preserve this reality, be perpetually related to some form of consciousness.
The link of relation is, as we have seen, the power or act of Perception, which “runs the errands” between consciousness and objectivity. In the second range or plane of manifestation, the difference between subject and object (which was on the first range merely a nascent tendency) becomes fully defined; and the triple powers of perceiver, perception, and perceived, stand apart from each other, each ready to perform its own functions. What is perceived, Objectivity, is still undifferentiated; it remains merely the potency to exhibit all forms of images and imaginings, which are to be defined as to intensity, expansion, and duration in the subsequent ranges of manifested life.
These potential images and imaginings have as yet neither form, nor colour, nor sound, nor solidity; but they have the germs of all these, not yet separated. This potential Objectivity contains, in reality, the possibility of an infinite variety of perceptions and sensations, only a few of which, such as sound, colour, and form, we can realize, as only these few are related to our present existence.
In the third range, or plane of life, a new element is introduced. The germs of objectivity – which are bound by perception to the unit of consciousness (grouped, as we have seen, in sevenfold hosts) – meet with their first expansion through the element of varying intensity. This element of varying intensity is generated by the eternal motion of ebb and flow which inheres eternally in the One Infinite Life, and which gives birth to the eternally repeated alternation of manifestation and obscuration in the One Infinite Life.
Repeated in each germ or potential centre of objectivity, as the tide of the ocean is repeated in the ebb and flow of each wavelet, this eternal motion is transformed into a tendency to perpetual waxing and waning of intensity; and this new element enters into each and every potentiality of perceptions, images, and sensations, which, as we have seen, adhere in the undifferentiated objectivity. In the sensation of sound this element corresponds to the increasing and decreasing loudness of any note, the tone of the note remaining, however, the same. In the sensation of colour this element corresponds to gradually increasing and decreasing brightness of any light, the colour of which meanwhile remains the same. This increase of brightness being produced, for instance, when a lamp is moved gradually towards, and then away from, the eye; the increase and decrease in brightness corresponding to an alternate widening and narrowing of the image of the lamp on the retina. Another aspect of this element of intensity depends not on the extent of the retina covered by an image, but on 495 the strength or weakness of the vibrations affecting the same portion of the retina; and this is probably the simplest form of this element.
If a source of sound emitting an even note of uniform intensity be moved gradually towards and away from the ear, the sensation produced will be exactly the same as if the source emitting the note were at a uniform distance all the time, but of alternating intensity; the waxing and waning of the sensation of sound will in both cases be the same. Following out this line of thought, it appears probable that from the waxing and waning of sensation, the idea of distance was originally derived.
If, therefore, we imagine each unit of life in the sevenfold formative hosts, receiving – from the separation of its twin-powers of Consciousness and Will – the power to generate and the power to receive impressions and images; and if we further conceive the elementary objectivity thus formed subjected to a rhythmic ebb and flow, we can figure to ourselves th gradual formation of an objective world containing the potentiality of every form of image, perception, and sensation; these images, perceptions, and sensations being infinitely various, and containing wide diapasons of objectivity which are at present unrealisable to us; further, each of these potential images, perceptions, and sensations possesses the possibility of waxing and waning intensity; and from this waxing and waning intensity the idea of nearness and farness grows up in relation to each image, perception, and sensation. The characteristics, therefore, of this, the third range or plane of life, are the varying intensity of the infinite range of perceptions, with the sense of distance and measure generated by this varying intensity.
This sense of nearness and farness is the first germ of what is afterwards to become the fully developed idea of space.
This plane, the third, counting downwards or outwards from the beginning of manifested life, has been called the plane of Sound, or plane of Æther; perhaps because sound by itself conveys to us no idea of space beyond that of nearness and farness, and therefore belongs peculiarly to this plane of life. It must not be supposed, however, that this plane is limited to the potentiality of producing sound, as we understand it; I think the truth is that it contains equally the potentiality of all perceptions, but in that form and quality that we are most familiar with in sound. This third plane, therefore, has the quality of intensity, of distance, of measure, which we apply to sound, as its dominant character; and may consequently be called the plane in which Sound dominates, or simply, the plane of Sound. It must be remembered, however, that it contains the potentiality of every shade of colour, as well as of every note of sound, and the germ of all other perceptions in the same way; these perceptions being limited to the single manifestation of intensity, of waxing and waning, and giving rise thus to the idea of distance and measure, the germs of space and reason.
The next plane or range of life, the fourth, counting downwards, introduces the element of reflection or consideration. If we conceive of a 496 unit of consciousness, receiving the sensation of a gradually waxing and waning sound or light, which suggests the idea that the source of this sound or colour is gradually advancing and retreating from the point of sensation, and thus generates the idea of distance in a straight line; and then conceive the unit of consciousness to stand aside from the point of sensation, so to speak, and to view this straight line sideways; the conception of the straight line, with the point of view outside it, will at once give rise to the idea of plane space, or surface expansion. This idea of surface expansion thus induced from the memory or consideration of a sensation is the second step in the growth of the conception of space. Speaking generally, this surface extension is equally applicable to all the infinitely varied forms of perceptions, images, and sensations; but to our present form of existence it belongs especially to colour, or the element of fire, which is the source of colour. From the point of view of our present existence, therefore, this fourth range or plane of manifestation, which adds the conception of surface expansion to objectivity, is called the plane of Colour or the plane of Fire; the quality we are familiar with in colour or fire being its dominant quality; and fire therefore being spoken of as its dominant element. To this plane belong all plane figures, which are really the boundaries of spaces of colour. It is therefore the first plane in which form, as we understand it, has any existence, and therefore this and the lower planes proceeding from it are the Planes of Form; the three above, from which it proceeds, being Formless. As the sense of measure in the third plane is the first germ of reason – the measuring of objectivities by each other, so the standing aside and reflecting on sensation, which we have seen to belong to the fourth plane, is the first element of desire; for desire is the reflecting on past sensations, which generates the expectation of future sensations, and the longing for them which gives rise to passion.
The new element of the fifth plane, still counting downwards, is a second standing aside of the consciousness (if such an expression may be permitted), from the surface expansion of sensation which characterised the fourth plane. This standing apart from the surface sensation (which is really more correctly described as a pushing back of the sensation from consciousness), this generation of a point outside a surface, at once gives rise to the conception of capacity; of space of three dimensions; the conception of Space being thereby completed. Perceptions in this space of three dimensions become groups and bodies of images, which pass before and behind each other, according as one group or the other engages the chief attention of the perceiving consciousness. From this process, the ideas of motion, and of the alternate reception of sensation implied by motion, are generated; so that this fifth plane may be called the plane of motion in groups, of motion in space of three dimensions, which we connect with the expansiveness of air. More simply, therefore, 497 and in harmony with the classification of the two previous planes under the general names of sound and colour, or fire, we may call this plane the plane of Air, or of Heat, which causes the expansiveness of Air.
It contains the potentiality of every sensation expanded in capacity beyond surface extension; but as this expansion is for us represented by aërial expansion, we may say that aërial expansion, or, more simply, air, is the dominant element of this plane.
The sixth plane, still counting downwards, adds the ideas of internal mutation to objectivity; and this internal mutation in any given object may be described as molecular motion or growth. The idea of molecular motion or incessant mutation connected with this plane, has led to its classification as the plane of Water, as the molecules of water are perfectly free to move amongst and around each other. As incessant internal mutation partakes of the element of growth, this plane has been designated the sphere of internal growth or vitality.
The seventh plane, counting downwards, the last, adds to objectivity the idea of stability or solidity; and from this point of view the phases of objectivity on this plane are called the most material, and the plane is classified as the plane of Earth; the element earth in this sense simply connoting stability, steadfastness or solidity, in any image, and in the sensation that image gives rise to,
These two lowest planes are as varied in their potentialities as are the others; but as they are more familiar to common experience, it is not necessary to describe them more fully.
These seven planes, these seven ranges or phases of manifested life, are seven modes in which consciousness confronts the seven potentialities of objectivity. Each one of these seven potentialities is subject to further expansion in sevenfold degrees, just as light expands into the seven colours of the rainbow, and as sound expands into the seven chief tones of the musical scale; these sevens being further re-entrant, and capable of practically infinite sub-division.
The seven phases or ranges of manifestation are in fact the fields for the expansion of limitless potentialities of objectivity, linked to consciousness on each range by the power of perception; and this power, varying as it does on each range of manifestation, forms, as it were, a series of vehicles of consciousness, each with its own potentiality for every range or plane. We have, for simplicity’s sake, considered objectivity only in relation to a single unit of consciousness; but as we have already shown, these units are not really isolated, but are bound into sevenfold groups, humanities and hierarchies, hardly separated at first from each other; and hardly separated from the One Infinite Life.
The wills, therefore, of these sevenfold hosts, acting collectively in each of the seven fields of objectivity we have described above, weld the potential objectivities into sevenfold groups and systems, harmonising with 498 the division of life into hierarchies and humanities; and the original rhythmic impulse of ebb and flow acting on these collective objectivities imparts to them a circular, gyrating motion; which motion is destined in course of time to mould the collective objectivities into world-systems, sun-systems, and star-systems, corresponding in character to every range of manifested life.
These seven fields in which the potentialities of objectivity expand and develop before consciousness, and the seven modes or vehicles through which the perception of consciousness is exercised, are sometimes, for convenience, numbered in the reverse order, counting the latest and lowest as the first instead of the last. Let us summarise them:
The First and highest range of life is, as we have seen, a phase in which the twin powers of each unit of life are becoming separated; neither quite united, nor quite asunder. Each unit is further hardly separated from all other units, and hardly separated from the Divine. In this phase, the divinity of each ray or unit of life is hardly clouded by the awakening breath of separation and objectivity; the unity of life is as yet almost unbroken.
This First range of life, counting downwards, is the seventh plane, counting upwards; and the mode of Consciousness in it is the seventh principle, whose field is the seventh plane.
In the Second range of manifested life, the division of the one into three, perceiver, perception and perceived, becomes complete. Consciousness is linked directly to Objectivity by Perception, and apprehends objects by direct knowledge. The unity of each with all and with the one is still clearly felt. This second phase, counting downwards, is the sixth, counting upwards; its mode is the sixth principle, or Soul, the vehicle of direct apprehension.
The Third phase adds to objectivity the element of varying intensity, illustrated by Sound; from this spring the sense of distance, and the ideas of measure and comparison. This third phase of manifested life, counting downwards, is the fifth plane, that of sound or æther, counting upwards; and its mode is the fifth principle, or Mind, the vehicle of measure and comparison.
The Fourth phase adds the element of reflection, consideration or memory, where consciousness regards objectivity from an outside standpoint, giving rise to the sense of surface expansion, or plane space. The memory and expectation of sensation forming the element of passion or desire. This surface expansion is typified to us by colour or Fire, for all surface expansion, as we know it, consists of spaces of colour. This fourth phase, counting downwards, is also the fourth, counting upwards; it corresponds to the plane of fire, and the principle of Will and Desire.
The Fifth range adds the idea of capacity, or extension in three dimensions, to objectivity. It is typified by Air, or the heat which expands 499 air; it corresponds to the third plane, counting upwards, with its principle, the aërial body.
The Sixth range adds the idea of internal mutation or growth, and is typified by Water. It corresponds to the second plane, and principle, counting upwards, the principle of Vitality.
The Seventh and last phase, the first plane, or principle, counting upwards, adds stability or solidity to the object world, and is therefore typified by the element of Earth.
Each of these ranges being, as we have said, the field of infinite potentialities; to fully grasp them the powers of intuition and imagination must be used; for the mere logical sequence of terms is no more adequate to express them than the word “sky” is to express the blue firmament of heaven.
C. J.
Theosophy and Psychical Research
A United Buddhist World
505
Fundamental Buddhistic Beliefs.
I. Buddhists are taught to show the same tolerance, forbearance, and brotherly love to all men, without distinction; and an unswerving kindness towards the members of the animal kingdom.
II. The universe was evolved, not created; and it functions according to law, not according to the caprice of any God.
III. The truths upon which Buddhism is founded are natural. They have, we believe, been taught in successive kalpas, or world-periods, by certain illuminated beings called BUDDHAS, the name BUDDHA meaning “Enlightened”.
IV. The fourth Teacher in the present Kalpa was Sâkya Muni, or Gautama Buddha, who was born in a royal family in India about 2,500 years ago. He is an historical personage, and his name was Siddhârtha Gautama.
V. Sâkya Muni taught that ignorance produces desire, unsatisfied desire is the cause of rebirth, and rebirth, the cause of sorrow. To get rid of sorrow, therefore, it is necessary to escape rebirth; to escape rebirth, it is necessary to extinguish desire; and to extinguish desire, it is necessary to destroy ignorance.
VI. Ignorance fosters the belief that rebirth is a necessary thing. When ignorance is destroyed, the worthlessness of every such rebirth, considered as an end in itself, is perceived, as well as the paramount need of adopting a course of life by which the necessity for such repeated rebirths can be abolished. Ignorance also begets the illusive and illogical idea that there is only one existence for man, and the other illusion that this one life is followed by states of unchangeable pleasure or torment.
VII. The dispersion of all this ignorance can be attained by the persevering practice of an all-embracing altruism in conduct, development of intelligence, wisdom in thought, and destruction of desire for the lower personal pleasures.
VIII. The desire to live being the cause of rebirth, when that is extinguished, rebirths cease, and the perfected individual attains by meditation that highest state of peace called Nirvâna.
IX. Sâkya Muni taught that ignorance can be dispelled and sorrow removed by the knowledge of the four Noble Truths, viz: –
1. The miseries of existence;
2. The cause productive of misery, which is the desire ever renewed, of satisfying oneself without being able ever to secure that end;
3. The destruction of that desire, or the estranging of oneself from it; 506
4. The means of obtaining this destruction of desire. The means which he pointed out is called the noble eight-fold Path; viz., Right Belief; Right Thought; Right Speech; Right Action; Right Means of Livelihood; Right Exertion; Right Remembrance; Right Meditation.
X. Right Meditation leads to spiritual enlightenment, or the development of that Buddha-like faculty which is latent in every man.
XI. The essence of Buddhism as summed up by the Tathâgata (Buddha) himself, is:
To cease from all sin, |
XII. The universe is subject to a natural causation known as “Karma”. The merits and demerits of a being in past existences determine his condition in the present one. Each man, therefore, has prepared the causes of the effects which he now experiences.
XIII. The obstacles to the attainment of good karma may be removed by the observance of the following precepts, which are embraced in the moral code of Buddhism: viz., (1) Kill not; (2) Steal not; (3) Indulge in no forbidden sexual pleasure; (4) Lie not; (5) Take no intoxicating or stupefying drug or liquor. Five other precepts which need not be here enumerated should be observed by those who would attain, more quickly than the average layman, the release from misery, and rebirth.
XIV. Buddhism discourages superstitious credulity. Gautama Buddha taught it to be the duty of a parent to have his child educated in science and literature. He also taught that no one should believe what is spoken by any sage, written in any book, or affirmed by tradition, unless it accord with reason.
Drafted as a common platform upon which all Buddhists can agree.
Adyar, 12th January, 1891.
(Sd.) H. S. Olcott, P. T. S.
Respectfully submitted for the approval of the High Priests of the nations which we severally represent in the Buddhist Conference, held at Adyar, Madras, on the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th of January, 1891, (A. B. 2434).
| Japan | Kozen Gunaratna. Chiezo Tokuzawa. |
| Burmah | U. Hmoay Tha Aung. |
| Ceylon | Dharmapala Hevavitarana. |
| The Maghs of Chittagong | Krishna Chandra Chowdry, by his appointed Proxy, Maung Tha Dwe. |
Burmah.
Approved on behalf of the Buddhists of Burmah, this 3rd day of February 1891, (A. B. 2434):
Tha-tha-na-baing Sayadawgyi; Aung Myi Shwe bôn Sayadaw; Me-ga-waddy Sayadaw; Hmat-Khaya Sayadaw; Hti-lin Sayadaw; Myadaung Sayadaw; Hla-Htwe Sayadaw; and sixteen others. 507
Ceylon.
Approved on behalf of the Buddhists of Ceylon, this 25th day of February, 1891, (A. B. 2434):
Mahanuwara upawsatha puspáráma vihárádhipati Hippola Dhamma Rakkhita Sobhitábhidhána, Mahá Náyaka Sthavirayanwahanse wamha. (Hippola Dhamma Rakkhita Sobhitábhidhana, High Priest of the Malwatta Vihâra at Kandy).
(Signed) Hippola.
Mahanuwara Asgiri vihárádhipati Yatawatté Chandajottyábhidhana, Mahá Náyaka Sthavirayan wahanse wamha – (Yatawatte Chandajottyabhidhana, High Priest of Asgiri Vihâra at Kandy.)
(Signed) Yatawatte.
Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala, Sripádastháne saha Kolamba palate pradhana Náyaka Sthavirayo (Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala, High Priest of Adam’s Peak and the District of Colombo.)
(Signed) H. Sumangala.
Maligáwe Práchina Pustakáláyádhyakshaka Súriyagoda Sonuttara, Sthavirayo (Suriyagoda Sonuttara, Librarian of the Oriental Library at the Temple of the Tooth Relic at Kandy.)
(Signed) S. Sonuttara.
Sugata Sásanadhaja Vinayá chariya Dhammalankárábhidhána Náyaka Sthavira.
(Signed) Dhammalankara.
Pawara neruttika chariya Maha Vibhavi Subhuti of Waskaduwa.
(Signed) W. Subhuti.
Japan.
Accepted as included within the body of Northern Buddhism:
| Shaku Genyu | (Shin Gon Sect.) |
| Fukuda Nichiyo | (Nichiren „ ) |
| Sanada Seyko | (Zen Shu „ ) |
| Ito Quan Shyu | (Nichiren „ ) |
| Takehana Hakuyo | (Jodo „ ) |
| Kono Rioshin | (Ji-Shu „ ) |
| Kira Ki-ko | (Jodo Seizan „ ) |
| Harutani Shinsho | (Tendai „ ) |
| Manabe Shun-myo | (Shingon Shu „ ) |
Chittagong.
Accepted for the Buddhists of Chittagong:
Nagawa Parvata Viharadhipati Gun Megu Wini-Lankara. 508
Reviews.
Religious Systems of the World.[20]
This collection of addresses is well described as “a contribution to the study of comparative religion”, and contains many interesting and instructive papers, especially in Part I., which is devoted to Pre-Christian and Non-Christian Systems, as distinguished from Part II., which treats of systems of a Christian, Theistic and Philosophic nature. The papers of Part II. are from the pens of people who have a living faith in what they treat of, and among them is a short essay on Theosophy by Annie Besant. Of the papers in Part I. some are written with much sympathy and by specialists, others are the works of writers who can be placed under neither of the above categories. Generally speaking, however, none of the essayists have strayed outside the orthodox methods of Comparative Religion, as it is at present understood, and the speculations as to how some of the systems arose are far from inspiring. The papers on Taoism and Sufiism by Messrs. F. H. Balfour and E. G. Browne, and the scholarly paper on Mithraism by John M. Robertson, are especially interesting, while that on Hinduism by Sir Alfred Lyall is entirely inadequate.
On the whole, however, the organizers of this series of lectures are to be congratulated on their efforts to instruct the public, for, as they well say in their preface, “though most thinking persons are fully persuaded of their own belief, they are often unable to understand the standpoint of others equally in earnest, and thus fail to do justice to men of different creeds”. And if this is true of modern phases of religious thought, how much more true is it of ancient thought, which no longer has any champion living to interpret and defend it, or of Oriental faiths when treated of by infidel Westerns? We want the best of all religions, and nothing but the sincere conviction of the believer can give us this. On the other hand, the active Western mind that is bent on finding things out for itself, has done much for us in the way of gathering together facts with regard to the various religious systems, and we owe much to it. And though it may be too little reverent and too much satisfied with its own methods of research, it at any rate is superior to that lethargic exclusiveness that marks the present degeneracy of some prominent Eastern races. Neither method, however, will ever promote our real knowledge or our practical realisation of Brotherhood; and until we learn how not to lie to one another, and to understand that the human heart has the same aspirations and emotions in every clime and race and time, and that the human mind is occupied on the same objects though under different forms, wherever and whenever that mind exists; until then we shall never understand one another or have the least conception of that on which the basis of the various faiths of humanity rests.
What use is there in us of the West either writing on a great world- religion in a pitying tone of superiority, or confining ourselves merely to a criticism of superstitious overgrowths that have arisen owing to the ignorance and perversity of the multitudes! What use is there in this when we 509 have the very same phase of externalism and degeneracy at our very doors?
All religions grow corrupt, and all religions of to-day, without exception, are corrupt. But corruption is no part of Religion, but rather the outcome of man’s disloyalty to Religion. What is remarkable is that, as we trace the various religions back to their source, we find them pure and free from the subsequent overgrowths and debasements. If, then, the spirit which animated our scholars were to point to the best in all creeds instead of parading the worst to the glorification of that which is best in their respective orthodoxies, whether of religion or philosophy, we should all be better and feel more kindly disposed each to each, no matter to what race or creed we belonged. To-day, however, there is naught but a choice of evils; so that we must thank the writers of the series of addresses under notice for the good they have found, and hope that in the future they may be enabled to cease from parading the evil which exists, and, what is worse, adding to it by detracting from the ideals of others and inventing fresh evil by misinterpretation.
More Ghost Stories.[21]
Whatever may be our opinion as to the advisability of publishing broadcast facts of obsession and other psychic horrors, Mr. W. T. Stead, the well-known and enterprising editor of the Review of Reviews, is to be congratulated on the fair and impartial manner in which he has treated the various subjects of psychical research. The New Year's number, entitled More Ghost Stories, marks an important point in the evolution of popular interest in these misunderstood matters, seeing that it is produced in order to supply the unsatisfied demand caused by the Christmas number, entitled Real Ghost Stories. The very large edition of 100,000 of the latter was immediately exhausted in this country, and book-stalls that could have sold hundreds had to be content with dozens. Outside the general interest of the “stories”, which are familiar enough to students, we have to thank Mr. Stead for the reiterated warnings he gives against popular dabbling with forces that in nine cases out of ten are destructive to the individuality of the psychic tyro. In fact he prefaces the number with a page of warning in displayed advertisement type. “Should you be tempted to experiment in Spiritualism – Don’t !” – runs the most important paragraph in the “Caution to Readers”. Needless to say that the most experienced Theosophists have been for sixteen years sounding the same note of warning. Not, however, that Mr. Stead, any more than ourselves, desires to condemn either spiritualism or any other form of psychical research or hypnotic experiment outright; we, however, desire to place these experiments in safe hands and to keep the dangers of such experiments ever before the public.
The cases of obsession in the volume under notice are horrible, and may perhaps scare numbers of the general public; still they are not a thousandth part so horrible as are some of the facts that are known in the records of witchcraft, black magic, spiritualism or hypnotism, and though the phenomena of spiritualism are a good antidote to the strong-minded sceptic and materialist, séances, especially public sittings, are almost invariably fraught with great danger to the easily-influenced and little thinking. It will be interesting to notice the effect that the wide publicity of Mr. Stead’s collection will have on the public mind. The extremist, both the absolute negator and the credulous believer, will find his views cold-shouldered in the near future by the middle course that Mr. Stead’s efforts will force public opinion into; for he promises us that the two 510 collections already published are not to be the only ones of their kind, but that he will continue to publish as long as he gets sufficient facts, and as long as the public call for such information. So that since the facts are only too numerous and the public interest steadily growing, we may look forward to a bibliotheca pneumatica of “Ghost Stories” as almost a certainty. We notice several familiar names and initials among the contributors; and also, among the illustrations, the well known photograph by Resta of H. P. B.
À la Recherche des Destinées.[22]
We have much pleasure in noticing Eugène Nus’ last contribution to the literature of psychism in France, or whatever we should call the strange mixture of heterogeneous experiment, research and study which has lately been occupying the minds of the French public who take interest in any form of mysticism. Mr. Eugène Nus is perhaps the best known of spiritiste veterans, and has laboured hard to treat the matter fairly and to hurt no one’s feelings. Perhaps it is this over-anxiety to appear simply as an absolutely impartial recorder that makes him systematically refrain from giving an opinion, or venturing on more than the mere suggestion of criticism, or the interjection of a witty phrase, which, though containing a hidden argument, gives the reader the idea that the matter is anyhow not worth very serious attention.
We should say that the intention of the author has been to “vulgarise” the subject he treats of; we find chapters on the Unknowable, on the pessimism of von Hartmann, on Mr. Sinnett’s book, Esoteric Buddhism, on the Vedas and Buddhism, on the Kabalah and Rosicrucianism, Martinism, Eliphas Léviism, Neo-Christianism, and Spiritism, all mixed up together, because, doubtless, they exist to-day in Paris thus mixed, just as all sorts and conditions of men rub elbows in the street. Mr. Nus has a good word for everybody which, however, generally turns into a slight shrug of the shoulders before he is through the chapter. It is, as we have said, a work of “vulgarisation”, in the French sense of course, and not intended as one of any elaborate research. The information is mostly from second-hand sources, and the want of discrimination of the writer is sometimes so great that he speaks with favour even of the universally discredited H.B. of L. Mr. Nus has here compiled from the compilations of others whose object has been to alter fact for self-interest.
In the chapter on Spiritism the writer is naturally at his best, and he states the various theories with impartiality. On the whole, then, we think that À la Recherche des Destinées will do useful work in bringing matters of great interest to the attention of a new public, but fear that the unaccustomed reader will find himself in a maze that the author does not actively attempt to extricate him from.
The Twelve Principal Upanishads.[23]
We have very great pleasure in welcoming this collection of translations of the twelve principal Upanishads, which have attained this pre-eminence owing to their quotation and annotation by Shrî Shankarâchârya, the great Master of the Vedânta School.
The work is made additionally useful by the appending of notes from the commentaries of Shankarâchârya and from the glossary of Ânandagiri, 511 his disciple. The translations are those of Dr. E. Röer, from the Bibliotheca Indica, and one each of E. B. Cowell and Râjâ Râjendralal Mitra, which the courtesy of the Asiatic Society has permitted our brother Tookaram Tatya to collect and republish.
The Upanishads translated are as follows: –
| Aitareya, | Chhândogya, |
| Kaushîtaki-Brâhmana, | Isha, |
| Brihad Aranyaka, | Mundaka, |
| Svetâshvatara, | Kena, |
| Katha, | Prashna |
| Taittarîya | Mândukya. |
A preface is appended by Professor M. N. Dvivedi who, in introducing the subject, writes: –
“The Upanishads teach the philosophy of absolute unity. By unity is meant the oneness of the subject, all experience of objective existence being regarded as in and of it. Experience implies consciousness, and consciousness, a perception of ‘pure reason’, is the only reliable, self-illumined, absolute factor of our knowledge. All else is but mere representation in and through the mode of this consciousness. The world of being is nothing, considered apart from consciousness which, in its turn, is entirely independent of experience. It cannot in any manner be negatived, for the very negation implies its existence. This is the realm of the absolute, ever-existent, Brahman, an abstraction appropriately expressing this idea of unity in duality, being a term expressive of the whole of that which can be none other than a compound of Thought and Being.”
The latter part of the quotation is somewhat loosely phrased; a “unity in duality”, though orthodoxly Vedântic, is hardly so felicitous as the usual “trinity in unity”, Sachchidânanda Brahman, which asserts the Unity of Being, Consciousness and Harmony, or “Bliss”, or whatever other terms are found to represent the three hypostases or symbols of That.
It would be too late in the day to revive any old criticisms of these translations or pass any new criticisms upon them; they are useful and less wooden than later translations more familiar to Western readers.
But we would have welcomed with more enthusiasm a new translation and an intelligible modern commentary, by some advanced student of the Yoga.
Nevertheless, the publisher has laid us under a debt of gratitude by placing within our reach these scattered versions at a moderate price, which is all the more acceptable in the face of the high prices demanded for the two volumes of the “Sacred Books of the East”, in which Professor Max Müller has succeeded in evaporating the spirit of the Upanishads and leaving nothing but the dry bones, neatly labelled and varnished with the size of a scientific philology which is entirely absent in the originals. We do not want the fossil remnants of the past when the living soul still exists.
Catalogue of the Adyar Library.
We have received a bulky volume containing a catalogue of the works and MSS. in the Oriental Section of the Adyar Library. The numerical summary of the catalogue is as follows: –
| 1. | Vedas, Vedângas, and their Commentaries | 162 |
| 2. | Itihâsas and Purânas | 106 |
| 3. | Law | 159 |
| 4. | Philosophy | 291 |
| 5. | Science | 81 |
| 6. | Religions (Hindûism, Jainism, &c.) | 435 |
| 7. | Tantras | 31 |
| 8. | Grammars and Lexicons | 157 |
512
| 9. | General Literature | 226 |
| 10. | Miscellaneous works of reference | 145 |
| 11. | Pâli | 63 |
| 12. | Indian Vernaculars | 257 |
| 13. | Hindûstani, Arabic and Persian | 55 |
| 14. | Tibetan | 10 |
| 15. | Japanese | 272 |
| 16. | Chinese | 418 |
| Total | 2,866 | |
From the Preface we learn that: –
“Catechisms have been issued of Buddhism, the Dvaita and Vishishthâdvaita schools of Hindûism, the Upanishads are in course of translation, and a Publication Fund has been created by the Bombay Branch of the Society, which has brought out new editions in Sanskrit of the Rig Veda with Bhâshya, and the Yajur Veda, the Bhagavad Gîtâ (in Sanskrit and English), Patanjali’s Yoga Sûtras (in Sanskrit and English), Sânkhya Sûtras (in Sanskrit and English), the minor works of Shankarâchârya, etc., while the twelve principal Upanishads with Shankarâchârya’s Bhâshya are in the press.”
It is pleasant to turn over the pages of the Catalogue and notice the list of palm leaf and paper MSS. and the titles of important and rare works (mostly untranslated alas!). Some day we hope to see Adyar a centre of Theosophical study; it is eminently suited for this by its isolation and quiet solitude, and ill-fitted for the business Headquarters of an international Society, on account of its distance from Madras and of Madras from Bombay and Calcutta. But as a place for quiet study and literary pursuits it is exceedingly well endowed with that unbroken natural quiet that ever lends its aid to the laborious pursuits of the nine daughters of Jove. Why should not a Library some day develop into a University?
Theosophical Activities.
The Sixteenth Convention of the Theosophical Society.
The Report of the Convention held at Adyar from the 27th to the 29th of December last, is a bulky document. Members were present from the U.S.A., Great Britain, Sweden, Ceylon, China, Australia, Tasmania, and in India from the Punjab, N.W. and Central Provinces, Oudh, Guzerat, Bombay, Mysore, Nizam’s Hyderabad, Cochin and most of the British Districts of the Madras Presidency. The proceedings were opened by the President’s speech and a general review of the events of the year. A vase containing a portion of the ashes of H. P. B.’s body was then uncovered.
The following is a statistical account of the Branches of the T.S.
| 1875 | 1876 | 1877 | 1878 | 1879 | 1880 | 1881 | 1882 | 1883 | 1884 | 1885 | 1886 | 1887 | 1888 | 1889 | 1890 | 1891 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| … | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 11 | 27 | 51 | 93 | 104 | 121 | 136 | 158 | 179 | 206 | 241 | 276 |
513
Indra; Memphis; Willamotte; Iron City; Umballa; Gray’s Harbour; Madanapalle; St. Paul; San Francisco; Providence; Kalmar; Sholinghur; Erode; Dhyana; Chiswick; Salt Lake City; Bradford; Manchester; Croydon; Gotheborg; Springfield; “H. P. B.”; Pleiades; Ernacolum; Toronto; Annie Besant; Sydney; Toowomba; Adelaide; Amsterdam; Tiruvalur; Guntoor; Sadvichara; Pakur; Warangal; Manargudi; Brisbane; Dhyana Lodge; Ludhiana; and Adelphi.
Charter issued to the close of the year 1891. Deducting 21 charters extinguished, we have 258 living charters at the close of the year 1891. Geographically, the year’s new branches are distributed as follows: Asia (India) 11; Europe 8; U.S. America 16; Australasian Colonies 3.
Our Indian Branches are now established in the following Presidencies: Bengal 34; Behar 8; N.W.P., Punjab, and Oudh 25; Central Provinces 4; Bombay 7; Kattyawar 2; Madras 56; Ceylon 21; Burma 3. In other parts of the world we have: England 15; Scotland 2; Ireland 1; France 2; Austria 1; Sweden 3; U.S. America 60; Greece 1; Holland 1; Russia 1; West Indies 2; Africa 1; Australasia 7; Japan 1. Total 258 living on the 27th December, 1891.
The list of new Theosophical publications is very considerable. Thirteen new works, forty-one new translations of Theosophical works into foreign languages, four new magazines and seventy-six new pamphlets show an unprecedented literary activity of the T.S.
The Adyar Library catalogue shows a most healthy increase in valuable books and MSS., of which we publish a more detailed account among the Reviews of this month.
The President’s work in Australia and his efforts to form a union among the Buddhists elicited much applause.
The financial statement shows how much can be done on so little, and it will be difficult for our detractors to find any proof therein that the T.S. is a money-making organisation.
The various reports appended are numerous and replete with information, C. Kotayya, the inspector of Indian Branches, had a long recital of activity to lay before the Convention, and he is to be heartily congratulated on his effort to sustain the energy of old Branches and to develope new centres of Theosophical activity.
The reports of the American and European Sections are, as our readers must already know, replete with activity.
The Ceylon report shows that the Branches, though in many cases working vigorously, are suffering from the want of a centralizing organization.
The Colombo Branch has come into possession of an important Buddhist MS., which is soon to be published. It is an epitome of the whole Sûtra Pitaka, giving the rules of life for general action and for the development of spirituality. The numerous schools seem to be, on the whole, in a satisfactory condition.
The Australian Branches in several instances report good work, but the Section is not to be definitely organised until the heterogeneous elements have had time to find their own level.
The report of the Indian Section reflects very great credit on the exertions of the General Secretary, Bertram Keightley. It is not too much to say that the whole state of affairs has been changed by the energetic measures taken by our brother and fellow worker, and that the members 514 are beginning to feel a common interest and experience a feeling of being drawn together that they have not enjoyed previously.
The Convention then passed the following: –
“That the Convention records its sense of the irreparable loss the Society has sustained in the untimely death of H. P. Blavatsky, its co-founder and our honoured teacher, sister and friend.”
“That her exertions on behalf of the revival of Oriental Literature, the spread of spiritual philosophy, and the recognition of that highest ideal of human development which our ancient sages taught and which they realized in their individual lives, entitle her to be ever held in honour by all true Theosophists, and to be regarded as a benefactress of humanity.”
The Convention further adopted the proposition: –
“That the matter of the disposal of H.P.B.’s ashes be left entirely in the hands of the President for consideration.”
With regard to the “H.P.B. Memorial Fund”: –
“It was eventually decided by the Convention, following the Resolution of the European Convention, that the money of the fund should not be capitalised as suggested by the Committee; but kept on a current account, and used for the publication of books, and also as to the nature of the books to be translated that any book treating of spiritual philosophy, not only from the Hindu Shâstras, but also from other religions, should be translated.”
The following report was read: –
Your Committee beg to report that they have carefully examined and discussed the draft deed vesting the property of the Theosophical Society in trustees on behalf of the Society, which has been prepared in accordance with the recommendation of last year’s Convention upon the general lines of the trust deed of the Society in Europe.
Your Committee recommend therefore that those deeds be engrossed and executed as soon as possible in order to avoid trouble in the future.
They further desire to suggest the following persons as Trustees: – H. S. Olcott, W. Q. Judge, Hon. S. Subramania, B. Keightley, S. V. Edge, N. D. Khandalvalla, V. Coopooswamy Iyer, Tookaram Tatya.
Alternative in case any of above decline: – Dinanath Ganguli.
S. V. Edge.
V. Coopooswamy Iyer.
P. R. Mehta.
With reference to the report of the above Committee the President pointed out to the Convention that the Convention of last year passed the strongest recommendation that the property of the Theosophical Society should be vested in a body of Trustees, and said that a Trust Deed had been framed by B. Keightley and S. V. Edge on similar lines to the Trust Deed of the property of the London Headquarters. On the motion of Mr. Tookaram Tatya, seconded by Mr. Rai B. K. Lakhiri, it was resolved to adopt the Deed of Trust and to accept the Trustees suggested by the Committee.
A public meeting was held in Pacheappa’s Hall, Madras, at four in the afternoon. The hall was crowded, and addresses were given by Dr. Alice B. Stockham, Count Axel Wachtmeister, Miss Müller, S. V. Edge, Dr. Emma Ryder, Bertram Keightley. 515
The President-Founder brought the meeting to a close with an extensive review of the work of the year.
General Secretary: – Bertram Keightley, M.A. (Cantab.)
Assistant Secretaries: – S. V. Edge, P. R. Venkatarama Iyer, T. S. Ganapati Iyer.
Provincial Secretaries: – Western and Central India, Dr. J. K. Daji; Northern India, Pandit Gopi Nath; North Eastern India, Babu Dinanath Ganguli.
Councillors: – Tookaram Tatya, N. D. Khandalvala, Darabji Dosabhoy, C. Kotayya, Lieut. Peacocke, P. Kesava Pillay, V. Coopooswami Iyer, C. Sambiah Chetty, Dr. J. K. Daji, Babu Dinanath Ganguli, Dewan Bahadur, R. Ragoonatha Row, R. Jagannathiah, Baroda Prasad Basu; and all Presidents of Branches.
Executive Committee: – Mr. Tookaram Tatya, Mr. N. D. Khandalvala, Mr. S. V. Edge, Dr. J. K. Daji, Rai B. K. Lahiri, Mr. C. Sambiah Chetty.
The general opinion is that the sixteenth Convention has been a most successful one. Our limited space has precluded us from giving anything but the briefest abstract of the proceedings, especially of the reports, which are summaries of the lengthy activities which have already mostly appeared for the past twelve months in our pages, but sufficient has been given to show that the activity of the movement shows no sign of decrease, and that the object of our common endeavour is nearer than it has ever previously been.
G. R. S. Mead, Esq., General Secretary European Section of the Theosophical Society.
Dear Sir and Brother,
The General Convention of 1891 adopted the following resolution: – Resolved: “That the President-Founder be requested to convey to such sections and groups throughout the world, as may have displayed the greatest activity during the past year, the thanks of the Convention and the expression of its admiration and warmest fraternal sympathy”.
In accordance with the above the President-Founder now directs me to send you a copy of the resolution and to say that he personally appreciates most fully all that you and your colleagues have done.
Sydney V. Edge,
Assistant Secretary.
Indian Section.
Indian Letter.
Adyar. – I send herewith for the benefit of Lucifer’s readers some advance proofs of our Convention report, and by this mail are also sent photographs of the Convention groups. The latter will show you what a large gathering we had beneath the Adyar roof on the 27th, 28th, and 29th December last. The Convention of 1891 was in every way a success, and everyone seemed pleased and satisfied. One thing I especially noted with pleasure was the warm fraternal feeling shown by members to one another, and their evident desire to take counsel together for the good of the common cause. 516
The picturesque enters largely into our annual gatherings here, and it is pleasing to see the classical and pillared hall of the Headquarters filled with a throng attired in many coloured robes and head-dresses. The scene at night, too, is curious; everywhere, throughout the hall and lower rooms, are sleeping figures in various attitudes, lying on the hard floor on a simple mat, and sleeping the tranquil sleep which is only possible for those whose lives are simple and free from Western vices.
The feature of the Convention, as far as our Hindû brethren were concerned, was, I am sure, the lady orators. It was almost touching to see the rapt and earnest manner in which the ladies were listened to. Miss Müller in particular seems to have captivated all hearts, and the tour which she is now taking will, I think, be very beneficial to our work here. When the readers of Lucifer reflect what is the position of women in India, they will easily recognise what a potent factor for good a woman’s influence in the cause of Theosophy can be.
The public meeting in Pacheappa’s Hall, of which I send newspaper accounts, was crowded, and the greatest interest was shown, though, as a newspaper remarked, “the Europeans present, including the speakers, could be counted on the fingers of both hands”.
Our Convention visitors are now leaving us. Miss Müller, Dr. Emma Ryder (of Bombay), and Dr. Alice B. Stockham (of Chicago), left together yesterday afternoon for a short tour round some of our Branches in the South, including Coimbatore, Tanjore, Madura and Kombakonam. The General Secretary leaves on Saturday to continue his tour, taking first the branches between here and Bombay, and then proceeding to the North-West.
The President-Founder is well, save for some troublesome rheumatism in the feet, very trying to one of his active disposition. As soon as he is fully in working order he will, in all probability, go to Akyab, in Burma, and possibly also to Calcutta and Buddha-Gya.
Speaking of Buddha-Gya recalls to my mind the Vishuddhi Mârga, a Pâli manuscript which is now occupying the attention of our Buddhist friends. The book is described as a “superb compendium of Buddhistic philosophy and metaphysics”. It is written in Pâli, and up to the present has remained untranslated owing to want of funds. The work is said to corroborate, support, and amplify, the teachings of the Secret Doctrine and of the Esotericism contained in the Bhagavad Gîtâ and the Upanishads. Vishuddhi Mârga means “The Pure Way”; i.e., the Path to Nirvâna. It was written in the fifth century of the Christian Era. If arrangements can be made for translating the work, it should, if accounts are true, be a valuable addition to our store of Esoteric knowledge. An article on the subject is appearing in the Theosophist, so it is hardly fair for me to anticipate it by any more remarks.
A recent issue of the Hindû, a leading daily in the Hindû interest published in Madras, in an editorial dealing with Theosophy said:
“There can be no doubt that so long as the chief principles of Theosophy remain what they are now, it will confer valuable benefits on this country. Universal Brotherhood, the doctrines of Karma and rebirth, and researches in occult philosophies, are the chief features of Theosophy, and these undoubtedly involve an enquiry into Indian philosophy and literature. Universal Brotherhood is not within the range of the practical ambition of the Indian people. We are not advanced enough to interest ourselves in such high and disinterested cosmopolitanism. In a partnership between an advanced and powerful nation and a backward and weak nation the latter is bound to suffer; and such has been the experience of India in her relations with the ruling country. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“But this at least may be said with certainty, that India will not suffer by any success the Theosophical Society may achieve in spreading its doctrine of Universal Brotherhood. The doctrines of Karma and rebirth are essentially Hindû, and the more the Western nations study them the more are they likely to cherish sympathy and 517regard for the race that discovered and acted up to them. Besides these, the Theosophical Society has other objects more directly and practically beneficial to India. It tries to check the decay of Sanskrit learning; it tries to preserve and republish as far as possible old Sanskrit works; and it is willing to lend its co-operation in the spiritual and moral regeneration of the Indian people. To this last portion of the programme we attach the greatest importance.”
The above is encouraging, for it shows us that the Hindûs are appreciating the work of the Society on behalf of their ancient religions and customs.
Our brother, Rai B. K. Laheri, whom we had the pleasure of welcoming at the Convention this year, has kindly volunteered to guarantee a hundred Rupees per month for one year for a European resident at Lahore in the North-West. This offer comes most opportunely, and we may be in a position to accept it later on in the year. There is, I think, almost a greater need of men than of money just at present, and we are turning covetous glances on some of our best European workers, with a view to enticing some of them out here; the harvest is commencing to ripen, but the labourers, in truth, are few. Another admirable plan originating from the brain of our brother is a scheme for interesting Rajahs and other worthy men in our work, particularly in the special work of the “H.P.B. Memorial”. But I am running the risk of exceeding my allotted space in the pages of your magazine, so I must bring this month’s letter to a close.
S. V. E.
7th January, 1892.
Union of Practical Workers for Theosophy.
A large number of members of the Indian Section at the late Convention under the inspiration of Rai B. K. Laheri started this excellent scheme. The signatories undertake to work strenuously along the lines indicated, and to answer to themselves honestly, at least once a month, the following questions:
1. How much time per day have I given to study?
2. How many people have I enlightened about Theosophy outside the Society?
3. How many meetings of the local Branch have I attended?
4. What proportion of my monthly income have I used for Theosophical work?
5. How far have I acted on and practised the principle of Universal Brotherhood?
What personal self-denial have I practised in order that I may be thereby enabled to help on the work of the Theosophical Society?
7. What special piece of work have I accomplished in this month?
8. What steps have I taken to spread the knowledge of Theosophy outside the Branch either by lectures, newspaper articles, letters or distribution of leaflets?
The Union is of course unofficial.
European Section.
England.
The Blavatsky Lodge has had its public meetings packed during the past month, standing room being at a premium. The members’ meetings, on Saturday, are also very well attended, and much interest is shown in the programme of study. The monthly conversazione passed off as pleasantly as usual, and many new acquaintances were formed. 518
On January 25th G. R. S. Mead opened a debate on Theosophy before the congregation of the Rev. Fleming Williams’ church, at Rectory Road, Stoke Newington. The greatest interest and attention were shown, and the pastor himself, who led the opposition, proposed a hearty vote of thanks to the opener, and gave it as his opinion that Theosophy deserved careful study.
Annie Besant has held large and successful meetings at Loughborough, Brixton, Merthyr Tydfil, Cardiff, Pontypridd, Brighton, Central London, Carlisle, Maryport, and Whitehaven.
During the coming month lectures are arranged as follows: – Feb. 15th, Bournemouth; 16th, Poole; 21st, Milton Hall, Camden Town; 22nd, Woolwich; 26th, Kensington Town Hall; 28th, Wolverhampton (three).
Chiswick Lodge. – The first anniversary meeting was held on January 8th, 1892. Brother G. R. S. Mead from Headquarters delivered an address upon the leading Theosophical Conceptions, which was listened to with deep attention. The Hon. Sec. read a report of the year’s work, which was of a satisfactory nature; the most notable features were: – The Lodge Roll, which now musters twenty-nine members and three associates; a library of seventy-five volumes; several very successful lectures that have been delivered by Mrs. Annie Besant and others under its auspices; a readiness on the part of the local press to discuss Theosophy and the movement generally in its columns. The following officers were then elected for the ensuing year: – President, W. Kingsland; Vice-President, A. A. Harris; Secretary and Treasurer, F. L. Gardner; Council, Mrs. E. Slack and W. Kirby; Delegates to European Section Convention, the President (ex-officio) and F. L. Gardner. Meetings are held every Friday 8 p.m., at 37, Barrowgate Road, Chiswick. The present subject under discussion is a Syllabus based upon the Wilkesbarre Letters on Theosophy. The Library is available at any time, a charge of 2d. per volume per week being made, the proceeds being devoted to the purchase of fresh works. Further particulars may be obtained at the above address from F. L. Gardner, Hon. Sec.
Liverpool Lodge. – The meetings held on the first and third Thursdays in the month are well-attended, although there have been fewer strangers since we adopted the system of admission by tickets signed by the members of the Lodge. Last month the members and friends interested in Theosophy, at the kind invitation of Mrs. Londini, held a social gathering at her residence in Wavertree. Although the weather was intensely cold and snow had fallen heavily, there was a very satisfactory attendance, and a very enjoyable evening was spent. On Friday the 12th inst. G. R. S. Mead paid a visit to the Lodge, and lectured on “Some Theosophical Concepts”.
John Hill, Hon. Sec.
Croydon Lodge. – The first annual meeting of the Croydon Lodge was held on the 22nd ult. Mr. C. H. Rosher, who has placed a room at his office, 33, George Street, at the disposal of the Lodge, was unanimously re-elected President; Mr. Thomas Smith, Vice-President; and Mr. L. W. Crippen, Secretary. The Lodge now numbers twenty-seven members and associates, and weekly meetings are to be held during the ensuing term, the special subject for the course being “Occidental Theosophy”. A comprehensive syllabus has been arranged, lectures having been promised by members from Headquarters, to alternate with papers by members of the Lodge. The Hon. Sec.’s address is 112, North End. Bro. Walter R. Old lectured on Tuesday, 20th ult., on “Astrology”. The room was well-filled and evident interest was shown throughout the lecture and the discussion which followed.
Earl’s Court Lodge held its preliminary meeting on the 24th ult., at 3a, The Mansions, Earl’s Court. Mr. R. Machell was elected President; Mrs. Gordon, Vice-President; Mr. A. J. Hailey, Secretary; and Miss Merry, 519 Treasurer; together with Mrs. Gillingwater and Mr. E. Honan as Committee. The Lodge will meet every Sunday at 8 p.m., at Mr. Machell’s studio, 3, Scarsdale Studios, Stratford Road, Kensington. The preliminary meeting was opened by R. Machell, who gave an address upon the objects of the T.S. The conduct of business arrangements, the enrolling of members, etc., was then taken by Walter Old. The Lodge starts with a roll-call of fourteen members, and is virtually a local offshoot of the Blavatsky Lodge. Local members should endeavour to give their full support to the new Lodge, and help to make it a strong and useful centre of Theosophic thought and activity.
Wachtmeister Lodge, 16, Queen’s Parade, Lavender Hill. The following lectures will be given during the coming month, Sunday evenings, 7.15: – Feb. 21st, Jas. M. Pryse, “Secret Doctrine”; Feb. 28th, G. R. S. Mead, B.A., “The World Soul”; March 6th, Sidney Coryn, “Imagination as a Force”; March 13th, W. R. Old, “The World as Object and Subject”.
The Philalethean Lodge, Brixton, arranged a lecture for Annie Besant on the 29th ult., in Brixton Hall, Acre Lane. The audience followed the lecture most closely and with evident interest. On the 5th inst. G. R. S. Mead lectured to the Lodge on “The Future of Humanity”.
Bradford Lodge. – During the last three months this Lodge has been in full harness. For a few weeks after Mrs. Besant’s lecture our own rooms were quite inadequate for the rush of inquirers seeking further information. Most of these were satisfied that we could at least hold our own, some were convinced that they could not hold theirs, and accordingly have joined our society, either as full members or associates, while some few others still attend our meetings as visitors. On January 6th we had a “Social Evening” at the Alexandra Hotel, when about forty persons were present. Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, of London, who was visiting in the neighbourhood, gave a very interesting address, which was listened to with intense satisfaction by the audience. After this, the audience differentiated into nuclei, which formed centres of discussion of Theosophical and kindred subjects, so strong that the musical efforts of Bros. Dunn, Gibson and Clayton, to reduce the meeting to its original state, proved quite futile.
Bournemouth Centre. – The Bournemouth Theosophical Centre is reading the Key to Theosophy. The following papers have been read or promised by various members: – “The First Cause”, “Life of Buddha” (two papers), “The Birth of a World-Chain”, “Symbology”, “The Seven Principles”, “Rounds and Races”. We are hoping that Mrs. Besant’s lecture in February may increase the number of our members.
New Lending Libraries. – Mr. George McLennan, bookseller, Duff Town, Banffshire, N.B. Mr. W. J. Knight, Vine Street, Bilston, Staffordshire. Mrs. Lloyd, 193, Bow Road, E.
Countess Wachtmeister has received from a friend one hundred copies of the Key to Theosophy for distribution. She desires to place them in the libraries of ocean steamers, in Free Libraries of towns and villages, in the reading-rooms of hotels, at home and abroad. Anyone who can secure the placing of a copy in any of these public places should write to Countess Wachtmeister.
Scotland.
Scottish Lodge. – Our winter course progresses well in spite of the prevalent sickness which has more than once necessitated a change in the programme. The paper on the “Borderland of Physics” was followed by a paper by the President on “Occult Symbology”, in which the symbols noted in the Proem to the Secret Doctrine were explained at some length, and in easy language; a few other common examples of symbols of the same class were taken as illustrations of the nature of symbology. The next paper was by a well-known physician on the subject of “Health and 520 Disease from the Occult point of view”. The lecturer gave many most interesting facts concerning ancient Chinese medicine, showing its close relation to the latest discoveries of modern science; then using the analogy of the body to a community, in which the cells answered to individuals, he traced the various types of disease to their correspondences in the political life of a nation; the disease germs being compared, according to their nature, to foreign foes, traitors, or the criminal classes, all which threaten the national life. The paper was followed and illustrated by an exhibition of the various species of bacilli in cultivation, which seen under a strong microscope showed many occult correspondences, and illustrated Theosophic teachings in sundry unexpected ways. At the next meeting the President continued his lectures on symbology, taking the subject of picture-writing and its allied subjects, and explaining some well-known symbols, such as the Prince of Wales’ Feathers, the Golden Lilies of France, the British Broad Arrow, etc. The next paper will be by the Vice-President on the Kabalah and the Pythagorean system of mystery numbers, and this will be followed by one on the Ether, by a Doctor of Science. All these will, it is hoped, in time appear in our Transactions.
In regard to these it is pleasant to note that the sale already more than covers the expense of production of the first number, and there will be some surplus to be handed over to our library fund; we make a special appeal to our friends of all English-speaking Lodges and Branches to aid us, by endeavouring to promote the sale of the Transactions. On application copies will be sent on sale or return, or can be obtained for sixpence halfpenny, post free, from A. P. Cattanach, 67, Brunswick Street, Edinburgh, or from 7, Duke Street, Adelphi, London. We have also to chronicle the successful sending forth of our first swarm, and the formation of a new centre, which will soon, we expect, apply for a charter for itself. “The Edinburgh Branch”, such is the name it has chosen, has started well; its aim is to teach the rudimentary doctrines of Theosophy to beginners, and to answer enquiries, and in fact to be an open door for everyone in Scotland who wishes to understand the subject. Should anyone think that the meetings of the Scottish Lodge partake too much of the drawing-room character this cannot be said of the “Edinburgh Branch”. Several preliminary meetings have been held, and Mr. G. L. Simpson, of 152, Morningside Road, Edinburgh, has been elected President, from whom all information may be obtained.
We hope the “Edinburgh Branch” may be only the first of a long line of children which the Scottish Lodge shall send forth to teach the profound truths of Theosophy to Scotland, for as a worthy and most earnest member of the Lodge said lately, “We learn easier from our own countrymen”.
On the 6th inst. a very full programme was arranged, and on the 14th G. R.S. Mead paid a flying visit to Edinburgh.
Dublin Lodge. – Report for year 1891. – The year which has just closed has been an eventful one in the annals of the Theosophical Society generally, and also in the annals of our own Lodge. On the 19th of April our Dublin Lodge was duly installed in its present quarters, with a resident staff, ready at all times to place the resources of the T.S. at the service of all sincere students of Eastern philosophy. Eight new members joined us during the year, and ten new associates. This, however, does not altogether indicate the progress which theosophical ideas have made in Ireland during the year. Indications are numerous that works like The Light of Asia, Esoteric Buddhism, Why I became a Theosophist, and other like literature, are being eagerly perused from Coleraine to Belfast and Cork, and from Mayo and Sligo to Kerry. And no wonder, for these ideas are gradually entering into the periodical and daily magazines and newspapers throughout the British Isles. There is a circle of Theosophic interest in 521 Limerick and another in Belfast, though somehow they have not yet got to the stronger attitude of founding a Lodge in either of these towns. With regard to our own activities, I have great pleasure in referring to the really excellent series of papers which have been read at our public meetings during 1891. A new departure was taken by the formation in October of a Branch of the League of Theosophical Workers and the adoption of a programme of work in connection with it, which has already been partly carried out. Among the items in the programme of the League already in operation may be mentioned distribution of pamphlets, etc., newspaper work, Debating Club for the purpose of educating lecturers on Theosophy, sending lecturers or debaters to various clubs, institutes and societies, and the organising of public lectures. Finally I may refer to the classes on Mondays and Thursdays. These have progressed very well, and the interest and attendance on these evenings is an ample justification for the continuance of this form of activity. Yet another activity of the greatest possible use and benefit to those who engage in it consists in contributing questions or answers on Theosophical subjects to the Vâhan, published monthly at Headquarters. This is an activity which I would specially commend to the attention of members or associates. Many questions of surpassing interest present themselves to all students, and the current of thought is helped on if we contribute these as they occur to us. Besides, the answers coming from the different writers always present the subject matter in some novel lights which are sure to be instructive.
Fred. J. Dick, Hon. Sec.
France.
The General Secretary during the past month has paid a flying visit to Paris, where he met with a most hospitable welcome from the members of the T.S. in that city. The establishment of the French centre has proved a success; old friends are again beginning to group themselves together and to give practical demonstration of their interest in the effort by liberal donations for the continuance of the work. Groups of study are proceeding steadily, and fresh plans are formed for systematic propaganda and extended meetings. Le Lotus Bleu is to be further enlarged, and will contain articles by new writers. Several books are being written, and elementary books will be put in hand. An application for a charter has been sent in. The new Branch is to be called the “Ananta”, and will be under the Presidency of our old friend, Mr. Arthur Arnould; the energetic secretary being another old friend, Mr. E. J. Coulomb, to whose activity the present revival of work in Paris is mainly due. The weekly public meetings are proving quite a success, and hundreds of pamphlets are being sent out weekly.
Spain.
I am happy to be able to report the uninterrupted progress of Theosophy at Barcelona, thanks to the propaganda which has been helped on by the public press. Prospectuses giving the table of contents of Isis Unveiled have been printed and distributed to the number of 15,000, and appeared in the two principal journals of Barcelona in one day.
The effect thus produced has been great, especially in clerical quarters. The adversaries of Theosophy who oppose it out of ignorance or conceit, two things generally inseparable, are now convinced of the vitality and ample resources of the T.S., and they dare not for the present attack us openly. A Spanish proverb says: – “Who strikes first strikes twice”; this we have done and have thus gained a great advantage.
Our brother Florencio Pol, although isolated in a part of the country 522 unfavourable to the movement, is working well, drawing round him all those who show any interest
Isis Unveiled (Isis sin Velo) has begun to appear in parts, the first being already out. In this manner the work will be more likely to find readers than if it were published in a large volume, which would either frighten people, or never be read through.
The Voice of the Silence (Voz del Silencio), that mystic pearl without price, that inexhaustible treasure for Theosophists, is also printed, and is about to appear. Our brother Montoliu has preserved in his translation all the Eastern mystical aroma, as well as the peculiar rhythm of the work, and he certainly deserves the praise and gratitude of all Theosophists, in Spain especially.
Notwithstanding the favourable position in which we are at present, it behoves us not to be too optimistic. Those at Headquarters will do well to realise, as far as possible, the intellectual, religious, and moral state of things in Spain, the enormous distance which separates us from the masses, or even the middle-classes, their ignorance, fanaticism, or rather the spirit of routine with which they are imbued. The higher classes, except those who are apparently religious, are either indifferent or unconsciously materialist.
At present all are keeping at a distance from us, thinking thus to weaken the Theosophical movement; but the time is near, I believe, when open war will be declared. I attribute their present silence to their perplexity as to the best means of attacking us. Whatever Karma may have in store for us, we are ready to do our duty, feeling sure of our final triumph, for “those who know” will not abandon those servants who remain true to their colours.
Barcelona, Jan. 28th.
P.S. – In Madrid propaganda is going on very actively. Brother Melian is receiving subscriptions to Isis, and is working with great zeal. Meetings are held at his house every Sunday.
Sweden.
During the third year of its existence the growth of the Swedish T.S. has been almost as great as during the first year, seventy new members having joined. The number of members amounted at the end of 1891 to 168, 85 living in Stockholm, 76 in the country, and seven abroad, 106 being men, and 62 women.
Among the events of the year concerning the whole of the Theosophical Society there is especially one which has deeply touched its members, namely, the loss which befell it through the death of its foundress, Mme. H. P. Blavatsky on May 8th. For the Theosophist, however, death has lost all its terror and ghastliness, and this deprives the sorrow of its bitterness, and gives to the wailing of regret a less selfish and a nobler accent. Well may the Society mourn the loss of its spiritual, enlightened, noble, and devoted teacher, but it may also rejoice on her behalf that she has found rest, after her long and wearisome earthly pilgrimage, full of trials and adversities.
Concerning the Swedish Society the most important events are the following: –
1. The adoption, on March 8th, of new rules elaborated by the council and a committee of five members, chosen by the former. The draft of the committee having been discussed at an extra meeting on March 15th, and 523 some alterations made, the new rules were accepted March 22nd, and sanctioned by H.P.B. April 12th. By those rules the name of the Society was changed into “The Swedish T. S.”
2. The foundation of a local branch at Kalmar, whose particular rules were accepted February 14th.
At the eighteen ordinary meetings of the Society forty papers have been read, thirty-two original and eight translations; reading is ordinarily followed by discussions. The meetings have been well attended.
At the beginning of the autumn the council was charged to elaborate a systematical programme for the winter meetings, in order to give the members an opportunity of familiarizing themselves beforehand with the subject to be treated at each meeting. The council considered that the society ought to carefully study the Key to Theosophy, and therefore decided that at each meeting during the winter one chapter of the Key should be discussed. The first six chapters, treated during the autumn, have been opened by Mr. Cederschiöld, Mr. Algren, Mr. Kellberg, Miss Bergman, Messrs. O. and G. Ljnngström.
The literary work of the Society during the year has chiefly consisted in the publishing of Teosofisk Tidskrift, which has met with such sympathy that the Society have decided to publish it during 1892 in a larger size and to augment the number of issues from eight to nine. A translation of Mrs. Besant’s article, “The Society for Psychical Research and H.P.B.”, has been published by the Society, and has been distributed gratis in order to meet the attack on Theosophy and Mme. Blavatsky, made in a series of lectures held in Stockholm and in different country towns.
Finally the series of essays “In Memory of H.P.B.”, written by some of her pupils, and consisting of their remembrances of and testimonies to their beloved teacher, has been translated, and will soon be off the press. The Voice of the Silence has been translated by one member and published by another. Mr. Härnqirst has published Light on the Path, The Perfect Way in Diet, Dreams and Dream Stories.
G. Zander, President.
Gustaf Kinell, Secretary.
Victor Pfeiff, Vice-President.
Emil Zander, Treasurer.
Amélie Cederschiold, Corr. Secretary.
Stockholm, Jan. 10th, 1892.
American Section.
The Malden T.S. has secured permanent headquarters consisting of three rooms, two of which are thrown into one to make a lecture hall.
An enthusiastic worker of Cleveland, Ohio, Mrs. Erma E. Gates, is offering to supply “tracts” for distribution at the mere cost of paper. Members of the T.S. are so appreciative of her generosity that they have already ordered twelve thousand.
Indra T.S., Clinton, Iowa, has rented the Odd Fellows Library for their meetings.
The Boston T.S., under the energetic presidency of Mr. R. Crosbie, is doing good work. The Key to Theosophy class commands an attendance of upwards of fifty. 524
The Pacific Coast Committee are making arrangements for a travelling lecturer. Many lectures, however, are being delivered by well known members. Miss Walsh has been delivering a course at Los Angeles. Mrs. Thirds, of Chicago, gave several at Stockton. M. Harris, Messrs. Rambo and Griffiths and Mrs. Thirds at Sacramento; and Messrs. Rambo and Griffiths also at San José. At San Francisco a most elaborate programme of lectures is maintained, the lecturers being Drs. Cooke and Anderson, Professor Sykes, Messrs. Keeney and Griffiths, and Mrs. Harris.
The General Secretary, William Q. Judge, lectured at Chicago on the 12th and 13th ultimo on Reincarnation and Karma; and also at Cincinnati, Ohio, on the 15th and 16th. This short trip covers over 1,000 miles.
The New York Headquarters has supplied lecturers to Washington, D.C., Harlem and Providence. The lecturers were Miss K. Hillard, William Q. Judge, and Alexander Fullerton. Brother C. F. Wright is much improved in health, and is established for a time at New York, where he is working on the staff and speaking and writing for Theosophy. Dr. A. Keightley has lectured at Providence.
The New York League of Theosophical Workers gave a hundred boys and girls a very pleasant Christmas treat. Dolls and other toys and books were given to the children, and there was plenty of ice-cream and cake. With reference to the ice-cream, Mrs. Judge, the President of the League, with an eye to English shivers at the idea, writes that in America no weather is too cold for it.
A Conversazione was held at 29, Lefferts Place, Brooklyn, on Dec. 16th. It was got up in an unofficial way by some of the members of the Brooklyn Theosophical Society, and invitations were sent to about a hundred and fifty of their friends. Mr. William Q. Judge gave a twenty minutes’ address on Theosophy, which was listened to with evident interest, and we hope profit, by the hundred and twenty-five people present. Refreshments were served at about eleven o'clock. The whole affair passed off with so much success that it is earnestly hoped that this first attempt will be followed by others, not only in Brooklyn, but in other cities as well.
With such manifold gifts, such mystic learning, |
| From “The Dream of Ravan”. |
525
Theosophical and Mystic Publications.
The Theosophist, which is the usual bulky January number, owing to the appended report of the Convention, commences with an enquiry into the decease of the late Miss Pickett which was conducted by Colonel Olcott and Count Wachtmeister during their visit to Ceylon. The suspicion of suicide which interested persons have busily promulgated is shown to be entirely without foundation. Lieut. Peacocke writes a curious interview with Govind Chetty, a drunken soothsayer near Kumbakonam, who predicts correctly for all that. Another good proof that psychism is not necessarily spirituality. S. E. Gopalacharlu writes learnedly and interestingly on Mantras in a paper that is to be continued. C. J. also continues his contribution, entitled, “An Outline of the Secret Doctrine”, and Ganganatha Jha completes the translation of the “Sânkhya-Tattwa-Kaumudi”. Colonel H. S. Olcott writes on “The Influence of Music in Psychic Development”. He shows, in a short but interesting paper, how rhythmical sound in one form or other is absolutely indispensable to it. “The Subala Upanishad of the Krishna-Yajur-Veda” is the name of the usual contribution of the industrious members of the Kumbakonam T.S. Cosmogony is thus stated in the opening shlokas, which also contain a description of the Heavenly Man in mystical language.
“There was neither Sat nor Asat nor Sat-Asat. From It Tamas (Darkness) was evolved. From Darkness came the Rudimentary Elements. From them came Akâsha; from Akâsha, Vâyu; from Vâyu, Agni (Fire); from Agni, Âp (Water); from Âp, Prithivî (Earth). Then it became an Egg. After remaining so for one (divine) year, it split and became the earth below, the Akâsha above, and in the midst Purusha (Spirit) of a divine form of 1,000 heads, 1,000 eyes, 1,000 feet, and 1,000 hands. Prior to the Bhûtas (Elements) he evolved Mrithyu (Kâla or Time) of three letters, three heads and three feet, and having a broken axe (Khanda-parashu). Of him Brahmâ (the Purusha) became afraid. He (Time) entered Brahmâ himself and evolved mentally the seven suns, and these Havirats (or suns) evolved mentally the seven Prajâpatis (Progenitors). Brâhmans were born from his mouth, Kshatriyas from his hands, Vaishyas from his thighs, and from his feet were born Shûdras. The Moon was born from his mind (manas), the Sun from (his) eyes, Vâyu from (his) ears, and Prânas from (his) heart. Thus all things were born.”
Brâhmans, &c., are rightly explained as beings of the three qualities, Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, and an admixture of these. There is also much that is interesting in the rest of the Upanishad and some information on the Talas.
The text of the fourteen fundamental beliefs of the Buddhists are printed under the title “A United Buddhist World”, which we give in extenso elsewhere, and Dr. Henry Pratt concludes the number with a good paper on “The Mystery of Personalization”.
The Path for January opens with an excellent editorial on “Dogmatism in Theosophy”. Here is the pith of it:
“All that anyone is asked to subscribe to is Universal Brotherhood, and its practice in the search for truth. For the efforts of those who are thus promulgating specific ideas are made under the sanction of the second object of the Society, which anyone is free to follow or to refuse to follow, as he sees fit. One may deny – undogmatically – reincarnation and other doctrines, or may assert belief in a personal or impersonal god, and still be a good member of the Society, provided Universal Brotherhood is subscribed to and put into practice.
“If a member says he must formulate a God, or cannot believe in reincarnation, none other should condemn or draw comparisons, or point to the writings of H.P.B. or anyone else to show that such a member is untheosophical. The greatest minds on earth are puzzled by great ideas such as these, and yet, holding them, can still search for truth with others in a perfect spirit of toleration.
“But at the same time it is obvious that to enter the Society and then, under our plea of tolerance, assert that Theosophy should not be studied, that the great body of thought and philosophy offered in our 526 literature shall not be investigated, is untheosophical, unpractical, and absurd, for it were to nullify the whole object of our organization; it is a dogmatism that flows from negation and indifference.”
The next paper is evidently from the pen of no mean humourist. “The Factotum” gives fifteen examples of letters received by the Editor of “The Way”. The basis of fact on which they are plainly founded makes the reading of them all the more laughable. It is a mistake to imagine that Theosophists are no lovers of humour, for their appreciation of the ridiculous is usually above the average. We next come to a parable; but the art of writing parables seems to have perished with antiquity. The following paper, by William Q. Judge, “Of ‘Metaphysical Healing’,” is exceedingly sensible, to the point, and in good season. It is time to protest loudly against the many errors of “Mind Cure”, “Christian Science”, and “Mental Science”, and Mr. Judge has done his work well and has our complete concurrence. A very good paper also is the article by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, entitled “A Talk about Theosophy”. It should have the effect of weeding out the phenomenalists, or what is better, persuading them to weed out their own faults and failings. W.Q.J. continues to give the results of his experience in underlining passages in the Secret Doctrine, and the literary part of the number is concluded by some useful “Lessons on the Stanzas of the Secret Doctrine”, the outcome of the studies of the Branch at Sioux City, Iowa.
Le Lotus Bleu gives us another good number for this month. “Un Disciple” continues his interesting studies in the Secret Doctrine, and attempts an explanation of the difficult subject of the Planetary Chain. Guymiot writes on “Les Deux Mondes”, and M. A. O. translates the interesting chapter on Karma from Dvivedi’s Monism. We are also very glad to see the signature of D. MacNab appended to an excellent paper, “Le Culte de l’Idéal”, ending with the words, “le droit à l’idéal c’est le droit au progrès, c'est le droit au bonheur”. “Le Mal de Cœur Divin” (Divine Heartache), is translated from one of the old numbers of the Theosophist, and the translation of the Key to Theosophy is also continued. Dr. Bonnejoy du Vexin continues his interesting papers on Vegetarianism, and the “Tribune Théosophique” continues to be sustained with much spirit and elicits much sound information.
The Buddhist occupies itself with the question as to whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and comes to the conclusion that he didn’t. A little paragraph headed “Veracity of English Witnesses” catches our eye; we should, however, hardly have thought that so delicate a subject would bear handling in some parts of the far East.
It is announced that a propagande bouddhiste is to be shortly established in France under the presidency of the Rev. H. Sumangala. The article, “Wiat is Agnosticism”, from the Agnostic Journal, by R. Bittell, is reprinted. D.C. Pedris writes a paper on the “Allegorical Character of Christ’s Atonement”, and controverts the theological dogma of original sin. An interview with Prince Damrong, Prince of Siam and head of the Educational Department, among other things elicits the following information:
“Our priests do not in any way mix in politics. They are quiet men, and remain inside their temples, not having the slightest desire to interfere in public affairs. Their salaries are small, and you will have an idea of it when I tell you that the archbishop or chief of our priesthood at Bangkok, the head of our entire clergy, has about £70 a year.”
This will be inspiriting for poor curates!
The remaining part of the interview is from the standpoint of a Buddhist of the Southern Church and is worth quoting in extenso.
“Yes, I am a Buddhist, and so also is the King. He and I profess the modern Buddhism. When you go and travel in the desert you must always carry a bottle of water with you. If you find water in the the desert all very well, but if you find none you have your bottle of water. So is it with our creed. We should do as much good as possible, we should do our best. If there is no future, we have in this case in this life the conviction of having done no harm, and, if there is a future, the good we have done will follow us in the next life. There is no creed which we attack or condemn. I can believe in Christ as much as any Christian, as far as his moral teaching goes, and I even confess that I am a great admirer of Christ, for I am a great admirer of the moral principles which he inculcated. You ask me whether we have any missionaries. Yes: we have many: I may even say more missionaries than converts. To my mind they proceed in the contrary fashion to what they ought. They begin by preaching that all that we know and all our belief in Buddhism is entirely false, and that there is only one truth – the faith which they propose to us. Then, after having said this, they establish schools and do some good things. They ought to act in the opposite way, to do good things and open schools, and then try to reconcile Buddhism and Christianity, teaching what is good in 527 one without condemning what is good in the other.”
The editor also has little mercy on the missionaries, and in tearing to pieces a report, shows that it takes £4,000 and a hundred missionaries and other agents to make an annual increase of three converts ! Not content with this he unkindly suggests that the report even to show this prodigious activity of three converts has been “doctored”.
There are also several lengthy accounts of a distinguished Chinese pilgrim, who was also present at the Convention at Adyar. His name is Lama Tho-Chia, journeying from Peking to Lhassa, and he belongs to the great Buddhist Monastery of the Mahâyâna School in Peking. Besides the two great historical pilgrims Fahian and Hiuen Tshang, he is the only Chinese pilgrim who has journeyed so far.
Theosophical Siftings, Vol. IV., No. 16, contains an interesting exposition of the Seven Principles by J. W. Brodie-Innes, entitled “An Elementary Note on the Seven Principles”. Mr. Brodie-Innes prefers to work from particulars to universals, as he considers it the easier method for the comprehension of beginners. In a footnote appended to page 4 the author considers that “the modern transposition of Prâna and Linga Sharîra is very confusing to those trained on H.P.B.’s system, without any very obvious gain”. But H.P.B. herself made the transposition and was very careful to point out the inadvisability of holding to any rigid classification, stating that numbering the principles was only a matter of convenience at best, and that as the student progressed he would find that every principle contained the aspects of every other, as the writer well remarks on page 17. Later on, in treating of the Christ-Soul, Mr. Brodie-Innes deplores that “those who are not Christians will not either believe or understand, because these things cannot be seen from outside, and they refuse to come in, in order to learn”. This is precisely what the orthodox Mohammedan, Buddhist and Brâhman contend with regard to their several systems, even as the cobbler of old thought that the best defence for the city was leather. We have still to learn what is Christianity, and what coming into it means, just as we have to learn what is Buddhism or Brâhmanism or Mohammedanism. If, as we believe, their true inner communion is one and the same, then though we persuade no one from joining any of these Churches, still we recognise that there are several claimants in the field, and also that it is possible to attain that communion independent of any of them.
Vol. IV., No. 17, contains a good paper by W. Kingsland on the “Mission of Theosophy”, reiterating much that cannot be too often repeated. The author says truly that this “mission” in its broadest and widest statement is the assertion of “the divine nature of man”. F.K. writes interestingly of “Illusion”, and the incident known as the “Evocation of Apollonius of Tyana” is translated from Éliphas Lévi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.
Estudios Teosoficos seems to have a more busy look about it than ever. Though its pages are still mostly devoted to translation, the redaction shows a great capacity for judiciously selecting the matter to be translated. The last number is accompanied by a four-leaf business-like advertisement pamphlet, containing a précis of the contents of Isis Unveiled. We sincerely hope that sufficient subscribers will be enrolled to make the publication of the whole work possible.
Teosofisk Tidskrift commences a new year with the January number. The initials at the end of the first article disclose the writer to be the worthy President of the Swedish T.S., Dr. Gustaf Zander, who exhorts all readers to study and try to help themselves, and cease to be as the young nestlings who do nothing but open their bills for the mother bird to drop food into. If much has been left undone, continues the doctor, which we ought to have accomplished, that is only a reason why we should strive the harder, remembering that every step we take has been trodden by our predecessors, who beckon us onward. The same writer answers a lengthy criticism on Karma as found in the works of H.P.B., and the question of “elementals” is discussed in another good article. Several pages are also devoted to translations from the Vâhan.
The Vahan, No. 7, gives more than a page beyond its usual length to Activities, so that the “Enquirer” columns are somewhat short this month. An interesting discussion arises as to the nature of the authority of H.P.B.’s writings among Theosophical students. All the answers seem to take a very sensible view of the question, and some misunderstandings are cleared up. There is, however, still some confusion of terms, and when we wish to be precise, it would be better to refer to H.P.B.’s invaluable teaching as to the “Esoteric Philosophy”. 528Thoughtless people often confuse the whole of the book called the Secret Doctrine with the “Secret Doctrine” itself, although H.P.B. distinctly states that compared to the full statement but little of the real Esoteric Philosophy could be given out. She gave as much as was permissible, and devoted the major part of her work to show simply that there was a “Secret Doctrine”, and that it underlay all the great World-systems. The “Secret Doctrine”, as its name implies, must always to a very great extent retain its character. What we have been told of it, however, is sufficient for many a long year to come, and will put those who choose to learn in the way of still fuller knowledge. Each of us can use our talent or hide it in a “napkin”.
Pauses, No. 3, is filled with a very judicious selection of reprints from the books and articles of Franz Hartmann, Olive Schreiner, Annie Besant, Alexander Fullerton, Elizabeth Hughes, Sir Edwin Arnold, and others. We should like to see those snakes off the cover, however.
The Pacific Theosophist, though the youngest, is the most newsy of all our Theosophical magazines. The editorial department seems to have the faculty of picking out items of interesting news and short paragraphs, and we notice with pleasure that its space is already overcrowded by the fact of the last three pages being set in bourgeois type. Especially noticeable is a column in which “Man's Sevenfold Division” is capitally briefed. The new items of activity on the coast are numerous, and many lectures are being delivered by now well known Theosophists who do not remain stationary.
The Oriental Department in its second pamphlet publishes a translation of the interesting work on yoga-philosophy, entitled Yâgnavalkyasamhitâ. The translator is Prof. Manilal N. Dvivedi. There is information of much value for the student to be found therein, but as with all works on Yoga, passages in it will cause the Philistine to blaspheme. However, we must expect the beginnings of things to be somewhat chaotic, and we have no doubt that very shortly the exact requirements of the Department will be more clearly defined by experience. The opinions of members of the T.S. on the subject have yet to be learned. The legend of Sâvitri, which concludes the number, is pretty in parts, and contains mystical teaching, but the Western reader again, from his training in romance being utterly at variance with the spirit of the East in such matters, will perhaps find it rather thin.
Branch Papers. The Indian Section’s twelfth number contains useful papers by T. S. Ganapati Iyer on “Karma”, and by A. Nlakantha Sastri on “Branch Work”. If our Branches take to heart the words of the latter worker, there will be little talk of any of them going into “obscuration”. The American Section’s twenty-third paper on “The Relative Place and Importance of Action and Contemplation in the Theosophic Life”, is one of the best we have seen for some time and might well receive some further publicity than that of a Branch Paper. The writer modestly remains anonymous.
The Sanmarga Bodhiny, the weekly Anglo-Telugu organ of the Sanmarga Sanaj, is almost entirely devoted to Theosophy and news of the T.S. If all our larger Indian Branches would do as much there would be little anxiety as to the regeneration of India.
Our Budget.
Bow Club.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anon. (to balance year’s account) | 70 | 0 | 0 |
| E. Bayley | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| S. M. Bright | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Anon. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| 1337 | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Total | 79 | 0 | 0 |
H.P.B. Memorial Fund.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anon. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Art Student | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| R. Benson | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Bradford Lodge | 1 | 7 | 0 |
| McDouall, Mrs. | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| J. R. R. Nisbet | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 8 | 5 | 0 |
Footnotes
- ↑ Identical with the “Concentration” of Patanjali.
- ↑ By Ignatius Donnelly. F. J. Schulte & Co., Chicago, 1891.
- ↑ Translated from the Russian by H.P.B.
- ↑ This scientific statement will never be accepted by an Eastern Occultist, for he would say that nothing that takes place, no manifestation however rapid or weak, can ever be lost from the Skandhic record of a man's life. Not the smallest sensation, the most trifling action, impulse, thought, impression, or deed, can fade or go out from, or in the Universe. We may think it unregistered by our memory, unperceived by our consciousness, yet it will still be recorded on the tablets of the astral light. Personal memory is a fiction of the physiologist. There are cells in our brain that receive and convey sensations and impressions, but this once done, their mission is accomplished. These cells of the supposed “organ of memory” are the receivers and conveyers of all the pictures and impressions of the past, not their retainers. Under various conditions and stimuli, they can receive instantaneously the reflection of these astral images back again, and this is called memory, recollection, remembrance: but they do not preserve them. When it is said that one has lost his memory, or that it is weakened, it is only a façon de parler; it is our memory-cells alone that are enfeebled or destroyed. The window glass allows us to see the sun, moon, stars, and all the objects outside clearly; crack the pane and all these outside images will be seen in a distorted way; break the window-pane altogether and replace it with a board, or draw the blind down, and the images will be shut out altogether from your sight. But can you say because of this, that all these images – sun, moon, and stars – have disappeared, or that by repairing the window with a new pane, the same will not be reflected again into your room? There are cases on record of long months and years of insanity, of long days of fever when almost everything done or said, was done and said unconsciously. Yet when the patients recovered they remembered occasionally their words and deeds and very fully. Unconscious cerebration is a phenomenon on this plane and may hold good so far as the personal mind is concerned. But the Universal Memory preserves every motion, the slightest wave and feeling that ripples the waves of differentiated nature, of man or of the Universe. – [Transl.]
- ↑ By Léon de Rosny: Georges Carré, Editeur, 58 rue Saint-André-des-Arts, Paris, 1891: price 50 centimes.
- ↑ Criticisms may be sent under cover to the Editor, marked “Outline of the Secret Doctrine”.
- ↑ By Saint Patrice: Paris, L. Sauvaitre, Editeur, Librairie Générale, 72, Boulevard Haussmaun, 1891; Price 2 fr. 50.
- ↑ Taken from four articles in The Dublin University Magazine of 1853. The Dublin University Magazine was published monthly from 1833-77. It then reincarnated as the University Magazine (London) published quarterly from 1878-1880, and then apparently ceased to exist on this plane. At all events there is no copy of any later number in the British Museum. We have simply selected one or two paragraphs and part of the interpretation of the “Dream” from the series of lengthy articles, the dramatic incidents of which serve as the means of introducing an exposition of esoteric philosophy. – Eds.
- ↑ By William Kingsland, F.T.S.: London, George Allen, 1891. Price 3s. 6d.
- ↑ Das Dasein, als Lust, Leid und Leibe. Braunschweig.
- ↑ Compiled by Ernest M. Bowden: London, Methuen and Co., 1891.
- ↑ By Walter R. Old, F.T.S. London: Hay Nisbet and Co., 169, Fleet Street, 1891. Price 1s.
- ↑ Compiled by E. M. Forsyth. London, David Stott, 370, Oxford Street, W., 1891.
- ↑ i.e., If Brahm became Sarv-Eshvara; if, going out of the infinite impersonal all-consciousness, in which there is neither knowing, nor not knowing, he assume the egoity of knowing, and thus become the egoistic and personal God, the all Lord, as such he knoweth not, and cannot know, the limits of that essence from which he has come forth, of that Own-Form which is pure Brahm.
- ↑
“Spreads undivided, operates unspent.”
Pope. - ↑ Compiled by Jasper Niemand. New York: Path Office. London: Theosophical Publishing Society.
- ↑ Yokohama: R. Meiklejohn & Co., 1890.
- ↑ By Chas. A. Ward; London: The Leadenhall Press, E.C.
- ↑ Translated into English prose by Protapa Chandra Roy, C.I.E. The Bhârata Press, 1, Raja Guru Dass Street, Calcutta.
- ↑ A collection of Addresses delivered at South Place Institute, Finsbury, London; Swan Sonnenschein & Co., New York; Macmillan & Co. Second edition, enlarged and revised.
- ↑ The New Year’s number of the Review of Reviews, 6d.
- ↑ Eugène Nus: Paris; Marpon et Flammarion, rue Racine; 3 fr. 50.
- ↑ Published by Tookaram Tatya, F.T.S., “For the Bombay Theosophical Publication Fund”: Bombay, 1891.