HPB-IU v.1 ch.Before the Veil: Difference between revisions

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{{Style P-Title level |2|BEFORE THE VEIL}}

At Rome, the self-styled seat of Christianity, the putative successor to the chair of Peter is undermining social order with his invisible but omnipresent net-work of bigoted agents, and incites them to revolutionize Europe for his temporal as well as spiritual supremacy. We see him who calls himself the “Vicar of Christ,” fraternizing with the anti-Christian Moslem against another Christian nation, publicly invoking the blessing of God upon the arms of those who have for centuries withstood, with

fire and sword, the pretensions of his Christ to Godhood! At Berlin—one of the great seats of learning—professors of modern {{Style S-Italic|exact}} sciences, turning their backs on the boasted results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are quietly snuffing out the candle of the great Florentine; seeking, in short, to prove the heliocentric system, and even the earth’s rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists, Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers but clever calculators of unverifiable problems.{{Footnote mark|*|fn4}}

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{{Style P-No indent|a proof of the genuineness and possibility of their phenomena. They give us facts that we may investigate, not assertions that we must believe without proof. Millions of reasonable men and women do not so easily succumb to collective hallucination. And so, while the clergy, following their own interpretations of the {{Style S-Italic|Bible,}} and science its self-made {{Style S-Italic|Codex}} of possibilities in nature, refuse it a fair hearing, {{Style S-Italic|real}} science and {{Style S-Italic|true}} religion are silent, and gravely wait further developments.}}

But Plato could not accept a philosophy destitute of spiritual aspirations; the two were at one with him. For the old Grecian sage there was a single object of attainment: real knowledge. He considered those only to be genuine philosophers, or students of truth, who possess the knowledge of the really-existing, in opposition to the mere seeing; of

{{Style P-No indent|the {{Style S-Italic|always-existing,}} in opposition to the transitory; and of that which exists {{Style S-Italic|permanently,}} in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately. “Beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas, and principles, there is an intelligence or mind [νοῦς, {{Style S-Italic|nous,}} the spirit], the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all other ideas are grounded; the Monarch and Lawgiver of the universe; the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty, and excellency, and goodness, which pervades the universe—who is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme Good, the God (''ὁ θεὸς'') ‘the God over all’ (''ὁ επι πασι θεὸς'').”{{Footnote mark|*}} He is not the truth nor the intelligence, but “the father of it.” Though this eternal essence of things may not be perceptible by our physical senses, it may be apprehended by the mind of those who are not wilfully obtuse. “To you,” said Jesus to his elect disciples, “it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to them [the ''πολλοί''] it is not given; . . . therefore speak I to them in parables [or allegories]; because they seeing, see not, and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand.”{{Footnote mark|†}}}}

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As to the {{Style S-Italic|myths,}} Plato declares in the {{Style S-Italic|Gorgias}} and the {{Style S-Italic|Phædon}} that they were the vehicles of great truths well worth the seeking. But commentators are so little {{Style S-Italic|en rapport}} with the great philosopher as to be compelled to acknowledge that they are ignorant where “the doctrinal ends, and the mythical begins.” Plato put to flight the popular superstition concerning magic and dæmons, and developed the exaggerated notions of the time into rational theories and metaphysical conceptions. Perhaps these would not quite stand the inductive method of reasoning established by Aristotle; nevertheless they are satisfactory in the highest degree to those who apprehend the existence of that higher faculty of insight or intuition, as affording a criterion for ascertaining truth.

The basis of this assimilation is always asserted to be the preëxistence of the spirit or {{Style S-Italic|nous.}} In the allegory of the chariot and winged steeds, given in the {{Style S-Italic|Phædrus,}} he represents the psychical nature as composite and two-fold; the {{Style S-Italic|thumos,}} or {{Style S-Italic|epithumetic}} part, formed from the substances of the world of phenomena; and the θυμοειδές, {{Style S-Italic|thumoeides}}, the essence of which is linked to the eternal world. The present earth-life is a fall and punishment. The soul dwells in “the grave which we call {{Style S-Italic|the body,”}} and in its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education, the noetic or spiritual element is “asleep.” Life is thus a dream, rather than a reality. Like the captives in the subterranean cave, described in {{Style S-Italic|The Republic,}} the back is turned to the light, we perceive only the shadows of objects, and think them the actual realities. Is not this

{{Style P-No indent|the idea of {{Style S-Italic|Maya,}} or the illusion of the senses in physical life, which is so marked a feature in Buddhistical philosophy? But these shadows, if we have not given ourselves up absolutely to the sensuous nature, arouse in us the reminiscence of that higher world that we once inhabited. “The interior spirit has some dim and shadowy recollection of its antenatal state of bliss, and some instinctive and proleptic yearnings for its return.” It is the province of the discipline of philosophy to disinthrall it from the bondage of sense, and raise it into the empyrean of pure thought, to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty. “The soul,” says Plato, in the {{Style S-Italic|Theætetus,}} “cannot come into the form of a man if it has never seen the truth. This is a recollection of those things which our soul formerly saw when journeying with Deity, despising the things which we now say {{Style S-Italic|are,}} and looking up to that which really is. Wherefore the {{Style S-Italic|nous,}} or spirit, of the philosopher (or student of the higher truth) alone is furnished with wings; because he, to the best of his ability, keeps these things in mind, of which the contemplation renders even Deity itself divine. By making the right use of these things remembered from the former life, by constantly perfecting himself in the perfect mysteries, a man becomes truly perfect—an initiate into the diviner wisdom.”}}

Hence we may understand why the sublimer scenes in the Mysteries were always in the night. The life of the interior spirit is the death of the external nature; and the night of the physical world denotes the day of the spiritual. Dionysus, the night-sun, is, therefore, worshipped rather than Helios, orb of day. In the Mysteries were symbolized the preëxistent condition of the spirit and soul, and the lapse of the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries of that life, the purification of the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss, or reunion with spirit. Theon, of Smyrna, aptly compares the philosophical discipline to the mystic rites: “Philosophy,” says he, “may be called the initiation into the true arcana, and the instruction in the genuine Mysteries. There are five parts of this initiation: I., the previous purification; II., the admission to participation in the arcane rites; III., the epoptic revelation; IV., the investiture or enthroning; V.—the fifth, which is produced from all these, is friendship and interior communion with God, and the enjoyment of that felicity which arises from intimate converse with divine beings. . . . Plato denominates the {{Style S-Italic|epopteia,}} or personal view, the perfect contemplation of things which are apprehended intuitively, absolute truths and ideas. He also considers the binding of the head and crowning as analogous to the authority which any one receives from his instructors, of leading others into the same contemplation. The fifth gradation is the most perfect felicity arising from hence, and, according

{{Style P-No indent|to Plato, an assimilation to divinity as far as is possible to human beings.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn10}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|“forms are numbers,” and that “ideas are substantial existences—real beings.” Yet Plato did not so teach. He declared that the final cause was the Supreme Goodness—το ἀγαθόν. “Ideas are objects of pure conception for the human reason, and they are attributes of the Divine Reason.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn11}} Nor did he ever say that “forms are numbers.” What he did say may be found in the {{Style S-Italic|Timæus:}} “God formed things as they first arose according to forms and numbers.”}}

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{{Style P-No indent|lectual principle with the principle of matter, evolves a third, which is Viradj, the phenomenal world. It is out of this invisible and incomprehensible trinity, the Brahmanic Trimurty, that evolves the second triad which represents the three faculties—the creative, the conservative, and the transforming. These are typified by Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, but are again and ever blended into one. {{Style S-Italic|Unity}}, Brahma, or as the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas}} called him, Tridandi, is the god triply manifested, which gave rise to the symbolical {{Style S-Italic|Aum}} or the abbreviated Trimurty. It is but under this trinity, ever active and tangible to all our senses, that the invisible and unknown Monas can manifest itself to the world of mortals. When he becomes {{Style S-Italic|Sarira,}} or he who puts on a visible form, he typifies all the principles of matter, all the germs of life, he is Purusha, the god of the three visages, or triple power, the essence of the Vedic triad. “Let the Brahmas know the sacred Syllable (Aum), the three words of the Savitri, and read the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas}} daily” ({{Style S-Italic|Manu,}} book iv., sloka 125).}}

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{{Style P-No indent|{{Style S-Italic|anima mundi,}} or world-soul, was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers never conceived of the One as an {{Style S-Italic|animate nature}}.{{Footnote mark|*|fn13}} The original One did not {{Style S-Italic|exist,}} as we understand the term. Not till he had united with the many—emanated existence (the monad and duad) was a being produced. The {{Style S-Italic|tivmion}}, honored—the something manifested, dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—the World-Soul.{{Footnote mark|†|fn14}} In this doctrine we find the spirit of esoteric Buddhism.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|which is {{Style S-Italic|beyond}} the heavens; Perception with things in the heavens; Intuition with the heavens themselves.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|tween the divine perfection and human sinfulness,{{Footnote mark|*|fn21}} and he divides them into classes, each subdivided in many others. But he states expressly that the individual or personal soul is the leading guardian dæmon of every man, and that no dæmon has more power over us than our own. Thus the {{Style S-Italic|Daimonion}} of Socrates is the god or Divine Entity which inspired him all his life. It depends on man either to open or close his perceptions to the Divine voice. Like Speusippus he ascribed immortality to the ψυχη, psychical body, or irrational soul. But some Hermetic philosophers have taught that the soul has a separate continued existence only so long as in its passage through the spheres any material or earthly particles remain incorporated in it; and that when absolutely purified, the latter are {{Style S-Italic|annihilated,}} and the quintessence of the soul alone becomes blended with its {{Style S-Italic|divine}} spirit (the {{Style S-Italic|Rational)}}, and the two are thenceforth one.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|earth around the sun, and of the heliocentric system.{{Footnote mark|*|fn27}} But we have good evidence that the latter system was taught in the Mysteries, and that Socrates died for {{Style S-Italic|atheism, i.e.,}} for divulging this sacred knowledge. Herakleides adopted fully the Pythagorean and Platonic views of the human soul, its faculties and its capabilities. He describes it as a luminous, highly ethereal essence. He affirms that souls inhabit the milky way before descending “into generation” or sublunary existence. His dæmons or spirits are airy and vaporous bodies.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|a lower place, who can prove him wholly wrong? One must needs go deep indeed into the profundity of the abstract metaphysics of the old philosophies, who would understand that their various embodiments of their conceptions are, after all, based upon an identical apprehension of the nature of the First Cause, its attributes and method.}}

To avoid confusion that might easily arise by the frequent employment of certain terms in a sense different from that familiar to the reader, a few explanations will be timely. We desire to leave no pretext either for misunderstanding or misrepresentation. Magic may have one signification to one class of readers and another to another class. We shall give it the meaning which it has in the minds of its Oriental students and practitioners. And so with the words {{Style S-Italic|Hermetic Science, Occultism, Hierophant, Adept, Sorcerer,}} etc.; there has been little agreement of late as to their meaning. Though the distinctions between the terms are very often

{{Style P-No indent|insignificant—merely ethnic—still, it may be useful to the general reader to know just what that is. We give a few alphabetically.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|for this? The condition of our physical systems, say theurgic philosophers, is largely dependent upon the action of our will. If well-regulated, it can produce “miracles”; among others a change of this electrical polarity from negative to positive; the man’s relations with the earth-magnet would then become repellent, and “gravity” for him would have ceased to exist. It would then be as natural for him to rush into the air until the repellent force had exhausted itself, as, before, it had been for him to remain upon the ground. The altitude of his levitation would be measured by his ability, greater or less, to charge his body with positive electricity. This control over the physical forces once obtained, alteration of his levity or gravity would be as easy as breathing.}}

Were our physicians to experiment on such levitated subjects, it would be found that they are strongly charged with a similar form of electricity to that of the spot, which, according to the law of gravitation, ought to {{Style S-Italic|attract}} them, or rather prevent their levitation. And, if some physical nervous disorder, as well as spiritual ecstasy produce

{{Style P-No indent|unconsciously to the subject the same effects, it proves that if this force in nature were properly studied, it could be regulated at will.}}

The designation {{Style S-Italic|astral}} is ancient, and was used by some of the Neoplatonists. Porphyry describes the celestial body which is always joined with the soul as “immortal, luminous, and star-like.” The root of this word may be found, perhaps, in the Scythic {{Style S-Italic|aist-aer}}—which means star, or the Assyrian {{Style S-Italic|Istar,}} which, according to Burnouf has the same sense. As the Rosicrucians regarded the real, as the direct opposite of the apparent, and taught that what seems light to {{Style S-Italic|matter,}} is darkness to {{Style S-Italic|spirit,}} they searched for the latter in the astral ocean of invisible fire which encompasses the world; and claim to have traced the equally invisible divine spirit, which overshadows every man and is erroneously called {{Style S-Italic|soul,}} to the very throne of the Invisible and Unknown

{{Style P-No indent|God. As the great cause must always remain invisible and imponderable, they could prove their assertions merely by demonstration of its effects in this world of matter, by calling them forth from the unknowable down into the knowable universe of effects. That this astral light permeates the whole cosmos, lurking in its latent state even in the minutest particle of rock, they demonstrate by the phenomenon of the spark from flint and from every other stone, whose spirit when forcibly disturbed springs to sight spark-like, and immediately disappears in the realms of the unknowable.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|the temperature of his breath; but how to protect one’s self from either hot or cold air, no physiologist has yet learned with certainty. The astral light alone, as the chief agent in magic, can discover to us all secrets of nature. The astral light is identical with the Hindu {{Style S-Italic|akâsa,}} a word which we will now explain.}}

{{Style S-Italic|Psychology,}} or the great, and in our days, so neglected science of the

soul, both as an entity distinct from the spirit and in its relations with the spirit and body. In modern science, psychology relates only or principally to conditions of the nervous system, and almost absolutely ignores the psychical essence and nature. Physicians denominate the science of insanity {{Style S-Italic|psychology,}} and name the lunatic chair in medical colleges by that designation.

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{{Style P-No indent|mobile arms of a kind of gallows to be seen in the vicinity of many of the temples. At the end of each of these arms is fixed a pulley over which passes a rope terminated by an iron hook. This hook is inserted into the bare back of the fakir, who inundating the soil with blood is hoisted up in the air and then whirled round the gallows. From the first moment of this cruel operation until he is either unhooked or the flesh of his back tears out under the weight of the body and the fakir is hurled down on the heads of the crowd, not a muscle of his face will move. He remains calm and serious and as composed as if taking a refreshing bath. The fakir will laugh to scorn every imaginable torture, persuaded that the more his outer body is mortified, the brighter and holier becomes his {{Style S-Italic|inner}}, spiritual body. But the Dervish, neither in India, nor in other Mahometan lands, will ever submit to such operations.}}

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These elementals are the principal agents of disembodied but {{Style S-Italic|never visible}} spirits at seances, and the producers of all the phenomena except the subjective.

{{Style S-Small capitals|Evolution}}.—The development of higher orders of animals from the lower. Modern, or so-called {{Style S-Italic|exact}} science, holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the unknowable, made their starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being, the

{{Style P-No indent|Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive basis.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|fire, the {{Style S-Italic|subtile from the gross}}. . . . What I had to say about the operation of the {{Style S-Italic|sun}} is completed” {{Style S-Italic|(Smaragdine Tablet).{{Footnote mark|*|fn35}}}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|ly distinct from the Mussulman mendicant of India, also called fakirs in some parts of the British territory.}}

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{{Style S-Small capitals|Kabalist}}, from {{Style S-Hebrew|קבלה}}, Kabala; an unwritten or oral tradition. The kabalist is a student of “secret science,” one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical {{Style S-Italic|Kabala,}} and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The Books of {{Style S-Italic|Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch,}} and the {{Style S-Italic|Revelation}} of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or “magic.”

{{Style S-Small capitals|Manticism}}, or mantic frenzy. During this state was developed the gift of prophecy. The two words are nearly synonymous. One was as honored as the other. Pythagoras and Plato held it in high esteem, and Socrates

{{Style P-No indent|advised his disciples to study Manticism. The Church Fathers, who condemned so severely the {{Style S-Italic|mantic frenzy}} in Pagan priests and Pythiæ, were not above applying it to their own uses. The Montanists, who took their name from Montanus, a bishop of Phrygia, who was considered divinely inspired, rivalled with the {{Style S-Italic|manteis}} or prophets. “Tertullian, Augustine, and the martyrs of Carthage, were of the number,” says the author of {{Style S-Italic|Prophecy, Ancient and Modern.}} “The Montanists seem to have resembled the {{Style S-Italic|Bacchantes}} in the wild enthusiasm that characterized their orgies,” he adds. There is a diversity of opinion as to the origin of the word {{Style S-Italic|Manticism.}} There was the famous Mantis the Seer, in the days of Melampus and Prœtus, King of Argos; and there was Manto, the daughter of the prophet of Thebes, herself a prophetess. Cicero describes prophecy and mantic frenzy by saying that “in the inner recesses of the mind is divine prophecy hidden and confined, a divine impulse, which when it burns more vividly is called furor” (frenzy, madness).}}

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{{Style P-No indent|profession of and a living by it—they are usually held to be possessed by a {{Style S-Italic|gandharva,}} a deity which is nowhere so little honored as in India.}}

{{Style S-Small capitals|Metempsychosis}}.—The progress of the soul from one stage of existence to another. Symbolized and vulgarly believed to be rebirths in animal bodies. A term generally misunderstood by every class of European and

{{Style P-No indent|American society, including many scientists. The kabalistic axiom, “A stone becomes a plant, a plant an animal, an animal a man, a man a spirit, and a spirit a god,” receives an explanation in Manu’s {{Style S-Italic|Manava-Dharma-Sastra,}} and other Brahmanical books.}}

{{Style S-Small capitals|Occultist}}.—One who studies the various branches of occult science. The term is used by the French kabalists (See Eliphas Levi’s works). Occultism embraces the whole range of psychological, physiological, cosmical, physical, and spiritual phenomena. From the word {{Style S-Italic|occult,}} hidden or secret; applying therefore to the study of the {{Style S-Italic|Kabala,}} astrology, alchemy, and all arcane sciences.

{{Style S-Small capitals|Pagan Gods}}.—This term gods is erroneously understood by most of the reading public, to mean idols. The idea attached to them is {{Style S-Italic|not}} that of something objective or anthropomorphical. With the exception of occasions when “gods” mean either divine planetary entities (angels), or disembodied spirits of pure men, the term simply conveys to the mind of the mystic—whether Hindu Hotar, Mazdean Mage, Egyptian hierophant, or disciple of the Greek philosophers—the idea of a visible or cognized manifestation of an invisible potency of nature. And such occult potencies are invoked under the appellation of various gods, who, for the time being, are personating these powers. Thus every one of the numberless deities of the Hindu, Greek, and Egyptian Pantheons, are simply Powers of the “Unseen Universe.” When the officiating Brahman invokes Aditya—who, in her cosmic character, is the goddess-sun—he simply {{Style S-Italic|commands}} that potency (personified in some god), which, as he asserts, “resides in the Mantra, as the sacred {{Style S-Italic|Vâch}}.” These god-powers are allegorically regarded as the divine {{Style S-Italic|Hotars}} of the Supreme One; while the priest (Brahman) is the human Hotar who officiates on earth, and representing that particular Power becomes, ambassador-like, invested with the very potency which he personates.

{{Style S-Small capitals|Pythia}}, or Pythoness.—Webster dismisses the word very briefly by saying that it was the name of one who delivered the oracles at the Temple of Delphi, and “any female supposed to have the spirit of divination in her—{{Style S-Italic|a witch,”}} which is neither complimentary, exact, nor just. A Pythia, upon the authority of Plutarch, Iamblichus, Lamprias, and others, was a nervous sensitive; she was chosen from among the poorest class, young and pure. Attached to the temple, within whose precincts she had a room, secluded from every other, and to which no one but the priest, or seer, had admittance, she had no communications with the outside world, and her life was more strict and ascetic than that of a Catholic nun. Sitting on a tripod of brass placed over a fissure in the ground, through which arose intoxicating vapors, these subterranean

{{Style P-No indent|exhalations penetrating her whole system produced the prophetic mania. In this abnormal state she delivered oracles. She was sometimes called {{Style S-Italic|ventriloqua vates,}}{{Footnote mark|*|fn41}} the ventriloquist-prophetess.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|anciently known as {{Style S-Italic|Brachmanes,}} mistaken sometimes for Brahmans.{{Footnote mark|*|fn43}} They are all {{Style S-Italic|magicians,}} or rather sensitives or mediums artificially developed. At present those who act as priests among the Tartars are generally very ignorant, and far below the fakirs in knowledge and education. Both men and women may be Shamans.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|means of the sacrificial prayers—the mantras—this liquor is supposed to be transformed on the spot into real soma—or the angel, and even into Brahma himself. Some missionaries have expressed themselves very indignantly about this ceremony, the more so, that, generally speaking, the Brahmans use a {{Style S-Italic|kind of spirituous liquor}} as a substitute. But do the Christians believe less fervently in the transubstantiation of the communion-wine into the blood of Christ, because this wine happens to be more or less spirituous? Is not the idea of the symbol attached to it the same? But the missionaries say that this hour of soma-drinking is the golden hour of Satan, who lurks at the bottom of the Hindu sacrificial cup.{{Footnote mark|*|fn44}}}}

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{{Style P-No indent|dences as to the practical results of Christianity as will at least give both sides of the story to the communities among which missionaries are at work. With this view it has established relations with associations and individuals throughout the East, to whom it furnishes authenticated reports of the ecclesiastical crimes and misdemeanors, schisms and heresies, controversies and litigations, doctrinal differences and biblical criticisms and revisions, with which the press of Christian Europe and America constantly teems. Christendom has been long and minutely informed of the degradation and brutishness into which Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Confucianism have plunged their deluded votaries, and many millions have been lavished upon foreign missions under such false representations. The Theosophical Society, seeing daily exemplifications of this very state of things as the sequence of Christian teaching and example—the latter especially—thought it simple justice to make the facts known in Palestine, India, Ceylon, Cashmere, Tartary, Thibet, China, and Japan, in all which countries it has influential correspondents. It may also in time have much to say about the conduct of the missionaries to those who contribute to their support.}}

After having prepared a lamp, some sandal, incense, etc., and having traced the magic circles taught to him by the superior guru, in order to keep away {{Style S-Italic|bad}} spirits, he “ceases to breathe, and calls {{Style S-Italic|the fire}} to his

{{Style P-No indent|help to disperse his body.” He pronounces a certain number of times the sacred word, and “his soul escapes from his body, and his body disappears, and the soul of the evoked spirit descends into the {{Style S-Italic|double}} body and animates it.” Then “His (Grihasta’s) soul reënters into his body, whose subtile particles have again been aggregating, after having formed of their emanations an aërial body to the spirit he evoked.”}}

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{{Style P-No indent|it proceeded forth from the Supreme One, the {{Style S-Italic|Brahma-Prajapâti}}, in whom it lay dormant from “{{Style S-Italic|no}} beginning.” It is the key to the traividya, the thrice sacred science contained in the Rig verses, which teaches the Yagus or sacrificial mysteries. “The Yajna” exists as an invisible thing at all times; it is like the latent power of electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a suitable apparatus in order to be elicited. It is supposed to extend from the {{Style S-Italic|Ahavaniya}} or sacrificial fire to the heavens, forming a bridge or ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate with the world of gods and spirits, and even ascend when alive to their abodes.{{Footnote mark|*|fn49}}}}

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In undertaking to inquire into the assumed infallibility of Modern Science and Theology, the author has been forced, even at the risk of being thought discursive, to make constant comparison of the ideas, achievements, and pretensions of their representatives, with those of the ancient philosophers and religious teachers. Things the most widely separated as to time, have thus been brought into immediate juxtaposition, for only thus could the priority and parentage of discoveries and dogmas be determined. In discussing the merits of our scientific contemporaries, their own confessions of failure in experimental research, of baffling mysteries, of missing links in their chains of theory, of inability to comprehend natural phenomena, of ignorance of the laws of the causal world, have furnished the basis for the present study. Especially (since Psychology has been so much neglected, and the East is so far away that few of our investigators will ever get there to study that science where alone it is understood), we will review the speculations and policy of noted authorities in connection with those modern psychological phenomena which began at Rochester and have now overspread the world. {{Style S-Italic|We wish to show how inevitable were their innumerable failures, and how they must continue until these pretended authorities of the West go to the Brahmans and Lamaists of the far Orient, and respectfully ask them to impart the alphabet of true science.}} We have laid no charge against scientists that is not supported by their own published admissions, and if our citations from the records of antiquity rob some of what they have hitherto viewed as well-earned laurels, the fault is not ours but Truth’s. No man worthy of the name of philosopher would care to wear honors that rightfully belong to another.

Deeply sensible of the Titanic struggle that is now in progress between materialism and the spiritual aspirations of mankind, our constant endeavor has been to gather into our several chapters, like weapons into armories, every fact and argument that can be used to aid the latter in defeating the former. Sickly and deformed child as it now is, the materialism of To-Day is born of the brutal Yesterday. Unless its growth is arrested, it may become our master. It is the bastard progeny of the French Revolution and its reaction against ages of religious bigotry and repression. To prevent the crushing of these spiritual aspirations, the blighting of these hopes, and the deadening of that intuition which teaches us of a God and a hereafter, we must show our false theologies in their naked deformity, and distinguish between divine religion and human dogmas. Our voice is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny, whether of {{Style S-Small capitals|Science or Theology}}.