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SCATTERED FRAGMENTS
In other words he might say that an individual who was a nursing infant at noon, on a certain day, would at 12:20 P.M. on the same day be an adult, speaking wisdom instead of his parler enfantin; for we have traces of man in the glacial period, say 250,000 years ago; and, as Professor Müller accords an antiquity of barely three thousand years to the Vedic parler enfantin, a simple arithmetic calculation gives us the above comparative results . . . .
. . . more, than is contemplated for the present work. Nor have we the ridiculous pretension—had we even the ability required for it, which we have not—to introduce in some 2,000 pages a matter which would have to be narrowed in twenty times this number. As stated in the Introductory we can offer but rapid glimpses behind the Veil of that mysterious knowledge of the Ancients, that took countless generations of Initiated Sages, and Seers to evolute, and put into a majestic System. We shall, therefore, begin by showing what were the views upon the Cosmic Evolution and similar subjects of the Initiates of the 5th Race of our Humanity, which appeared toward the very end of the “Treta-Yuga.” That portion of the Archaic period with which we are concerned, begins about that time and ends with the dawn of Kali-Yuga—the present age of the world, according to the Brahmanical calculation.
It is not with modern Science only, but also with exoteric Brahmanism or Hinduism that the Secret . . . . .
The knowledge of the existence of soul [is] impossible through the positive sciences. The religions as understood only assert but do not prove the existence of the soul. Because as we ordinarily understand religion, they are simply bare skeletons, the study in Theosophy supplies us with the 357needed proofs. The basis of morality and virtue are weak so long as morality and the course of virtue is not shown to be the necessary means for soul development, spiritual immortality.
The Pharisees had adopted the Ormuzd worship and detested images. They had the Avesta notions against intermarriage and could have developed their type beyond the Euphrates.
And Max Müller shows that Confucius regarded the popular gods, the spirits of the Elements and the Spirits of the departed pretty much with the same feeling as Newton did the Grecian mythological deities. “If we are not able to serve them, how can we serve the spirits?” he replied to a question how the spirits should be served. And his answer on one occasion would have but little pleased the Hindu Spiritualists, as he says “Respect the gods (Spirits) and keep them at a distance.”
[Fragment in H.P.B.’s handwriting from the Adyar Archives. It is marked p. 4.—Compiler.]
Nevertheless we may, in one sense, take it as a compliment. They slander only those whom they envy or fear. Lest any of the fog that hangs over the public mind may have come from our own dullness in giving an account of our work, we make one final effort to present the facts so clearly that misrepresented [?] . . . . .
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. . . Calls death—our memory returns. May this not be due simply to the fact that for a few seconds we linger on the threshold of that plane wherein there is neither past nor future, but all is one PRESENT? Especially is memory strong in its early association; the explanation of it being very simple: anything that has been part of our soul—and the child is all-soul—must, as Thackery observed somewhere, be of necessity eternal.
. . . And expressed it most beautifully, Sir William Jones who was, according to Hargrave Jenning’s opinion “deeply imbued with Oriental mysticism and transcendental religious views,” speaking at length of the theosophic foundation of the Buddhistic Maya (Universal Illusion), gives one of the most practical and truly-felt descriptions of the conception of the Buddhists in these terms: