Publications: The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 3(51), December, 1883, pp. 77-79
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FOOTNOTES TO “YOGA AND KALPA”
We fully appreciate the kindly feeling in which we are referred to in the following article. But there should be a limit even to sincerely-felt expressions. We have no desire of following in the steps of Babu Keshub C. Sen and never have or will lay claims to being classed with Sadhus or Gurus, “who have attained the whole truth,” least of all with “gods.” We warn our kind Brother: too much of enthusiasm degenerates generally into fanaticism.
[“Others believe that the administration of certain Kalpas or of particular preparation or compounds of them will give one the power to sustain his body, through all eternity, without destruction or decay.”]
This, the Mahatmas deny most emphatically. To make one and the same body last eternally, i.e., to prevent the tissues from wearing out is as impossible as the communication of perpetual motion to any finite object in nature. Though per se perpetual motion is a fact, the eternal duration of the materials to which it may be imparted is unthinkable.
[“Respiration and diet . . . cannot . . . give body that eternal immortality which, I believe, is an essential requisite 14 of Yogic success, and which Agastya Bhagavan says, can be secured only by Kalpa administration accompanied by Raja Yoga.”] What Agastya Bhagavan meant was not the eternal duration of any physical body, but of the inner, divine man in his individuality; and thus by avoiding reincarnations in other personalities, the unbroken preservation of one’s own higher personality. This may be reached only by such great adepts as he was himself.
[“. . . one may thus live crores of Yugas.”] Not quite so. “Crores of Yugas” in one’s self-conscious “inner self,” not in one and the same physical body.
[Agastya speaks of “the seven times born Brahma Garbha”] When Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, and “Fragments of Occult Truth” are read and comprehended, it will be easy to understand that the “seven births” or transformations refer to the seven births in the seven root races. Every such birth being the key-note struck for other and subsequent births in sub-races, each key-note resounding in a higher key than the preceding one on the scale of tones; or, in other words, every new root-birth carrying the individuality higher and higher until it reaches the seventh root-race, which will bring man finally to the highest, eternal Buddhaship or “Brahma Garbha” in a degree corresponding to that he will have acquired by his enlightenment during his lives on earth.
[Agastya further says: “In the beginning it was light. In its fiery next birth it became blue. In its mysterious third, it became red. In the fourth it got heated and became white. Springing then, it became yellow. In its next birth its color was that of the feathery peacock. In its seventh and last, it became, indeed, an egg-colored crystal.”]
The meaning of this is simple enough to him who has studied the theory of rebirths in the Esoteric doctrine. This gradation and change of colours refers to our physical and moral constitution on (a) the various seven planets and (b) in the seven root races. Planet A, corresponds to pure light—the essence of man’s primeval body when he is all 15 spiritual; on planet B man becomes objective—assumes definite colour; on C, he becomes still more physical—hence red, the red-earth or Adam Kadmon, being the material acquired by the monad in the preceding world prior to being developed as man—on this Earth; on planet D, white, the colour containing an equal proportion of spirit and matter; on E, he is yellow—(relating to the Yogi’s robe) more spiritual; on F, he is fast approaching “the peacock” colour, that bird being the emblem and vahana of Saraswati, the goddess of universal occult wisdom; while in the seventh and last birth man’s aura is compared to that of an egg-coloured crystal—pure crystalline, purity being the attribute of God-Man.
[The writer hopes that with the help of H. P. B. he will be brought some day face to face with the Mahatmas.] This does not depend on us, but on the writer himself. We can help him in the esoteric interpretation of that which he seems to understand quite exoterically as far as we ourselves know. But we can give no promise on behalf of our Mahatmas.