HPB-SD(ed.1) v.2 p.1 st.11 sl.43: Difference between revisions

<nowiki>*</nowiki> This is the reason why, perhaps, even Easter Island with its wondrous gigantic statues&nbsp;—&nbsp;a speaking witness to a submerged continent with a civilized mankind on it&nbsp;—&nbsp; is hardly mentioned anywhere in the modern Encyclopædias. Its mention is carefully avoided except in some books of Travels&nbsp;; modern science has an undeniable predilection for forcing upon the cultured public hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, as well-established evidence, for offering it ''guesses ''instead of Knowledge, and calling them “&nbsp;scientific conclusions.” Its specialists will evolve a thousand and one contradictory speculations rather than confess an ''awkward self-evident fact''&nbsp;—&nbsp;pre-eminent among such specialists being Hæckel and his English admirers and co-thinkers. Yet “&nbsp;they are authorities&nbsp;”&nbsp;—&nbsp;we are sternly reminded. What of that&nbsp;? The Pope of Rome is also an authority and an infallible one&nbsp;—&nbsp;for ''his ''followers&nbsp;; whereas the remarkable fallibility of Scientific speculations is being proven periodically with every change of the moon.

<nowiki>*</nowiki> Our best modern novelists, who are neither Theosophists nor Spiritualists, begin to have, nevertheless, very psychological and suggestively Occult dreams&nbsp;: witness Mr. Louis Stephenson and his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, than which no grander psychological essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist, Mr. Rider Haggard, also had a prophetic or rather a retrospective clairvoyant dream before he wrote “&nbsp;She&nbsp;”&nbsp;? His imperial Kor, the great city of the dead, whose surviving living men sailed northwards after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems to step out in its general outlines from the imperishable pages of the old archaic records. Ayesha suggests “&nbsp;that those men who sailed north may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians&nbsp;”&nbsp;; and then seems to attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a {{Style S-Small capitals|Master}} quoted in “&nbsp;Esoteric Buddhism.” For, she says, “&nbsp;Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This (the nation of Kor) is but one of several&nbsp;; for time eats up the work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor, and ''then mayhap the sea swallows them'', ''or the earthquake shakes them in. . . . . ''Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many. But the barbarians. . . came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers’ bones. . .” ''(&nbsp;pp. ''180, 181.)

Here, by the seven great Rishis, the seven great ''rupa ''hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the ''Saptarshi ''(the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, “&nbsp;the four preceding Manus&nbsp;” are the four classes of the originally ''arupa ''gods&nbsp;—&nbsp;the Kumâras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.&nbsp;: who are also said ''to have incarnated. ''They are not the Prajâpatis, as the first are, but their informing principles&nbsp;—&nbsp;some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their reflections. As Krishna truly says&nbsp;—&nbsp; the same words being repeated later by another ''vehicle ''of the logos&nbsp;—&nbsp;“&nbsp;I am the same to all beings. . . . those who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual  ''divine'' Soul, ''Buddhi'', made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of ''Manas) are in me'', ''and I am in them.''” (''Ibid'', 29.) The Logos, being no personality but the universal principle, is represented by all the divine Powers ''born of its mind''&nbsp;—&nbsp;the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the “&nbsp;Intellectual Breaths&nbsp;”&nbsp;—&nbsp;those angels who are said to ''have made themselves independent'', ''i.e.'', passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognised, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row’s excellent lecture on the ''Bhagavatgita'', (“&nbsp;''Theosophist'',” ''April ''1887, ''p''. 444.)